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 gonna talk about, is drinking alcohol a sin?
A lot of people have some crazy ideas on this today,
and we're gonna start out first with our Benalog.
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, "Perowin is a gift of God."
Perowin, 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'll be 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.
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-nominational church, pretty large church.
He's recently stepped down because of pride, whatever that means.
But maybe it's because he had a few two keggers or something going on.
Maybe that's his problem.
But this guy, he has a little like 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, real, real heresy and 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, and
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?
Let me just answer this 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, alright?
First 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 deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.
By means of hypocrisies, of liars, seated in their own consciences 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 wanted to say, just based on that reading alone, I don't know how you could
say that the way you can tell if somebody is 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 and 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 it with the word of God in prayer.
By the way, all right, 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, all right, 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 scriptures.
Okay, let's just pause over here a second.
We know that we're not...
Now, 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 refused, 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.
Well, you might as well consume that if we were to see what they're saying.
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?
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.
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 with 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, 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, 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 what, 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.
...drunk with wine, for 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 dilutes their mind that
becomes a better dad, a better spouse, a better table guest, okay?
If you've got somebody who's so miserable, you want them to drink so they pass out, okay?
The problem isn't 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 determine 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 to do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit.
So yeah, maybe you can drink, but the question is not can you, but should you?
In Corinthians 6-3, it says don't do anything that would cause the ministry to be discredited.
Now certainly that means drunkenness.
The other thing that might cause the ministry to be discredited is if you're with what 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 in 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 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.
It's on everyone's mind, do you drink alcohol?
Yeah, I can.
The question is not do you or don't you.
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've got to go.
There's some real truth real quick.
Join us next week.
We'll be talking about medical marijuana.
All right.
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 a real question that was on everybody's mind.
He's like, "Yeah, I drink.
Yeah.
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, 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, oh drugs as well, heroin, cocaine, you name it, it's
a clown world.
Well, so 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 others?
Make sure you do it lovingly.
Have you prayed yet for 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 okay 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.
The sky, 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 and 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.
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 that.
And then you watch the clip again and it's just amazing.
The fact that people, I mean, I think they have to be drunk to actually say these things.
I think he might be high or drunk during this video.
How could you literally say that?
I mean, let's go ahead, let's down some arsenic as long as we don't do it thoughtlessly.
Yeah.
Let's down some formaldehyde.
Well, 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,
everything's great.
Everything's wonderful.
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 had never
even been on these particular drugs.
I mean, uh, 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?
No.
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, you know, poison
or toxic waste or Joe Biden, these things aren't unclean anymore.
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 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.
And 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.
It's a blessing.
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, this is like the John 3 16 of the alcohol proponent
crowd that Jesus turned alcohol, or I 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 basically making Jesus a bartender or something.
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 a weird straw man that he tries to paint.
He says, well, if you're saying that Jesus didn't turn water into 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 say like, if alcohol is a sin, then Jesus is a sinner, which it's like, or
I'm sorry, if wine is alcoholic there, then you're making Jesus a sinner.
Well, here's the 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 didn't even know how to invent it until Welch's.
They didn't even know what fruit juice was or anything like that.
It's like this stupid idea that for thousands of years, no one on the planet ever squeezed
a fruit and noticed that juice came out of it.
It's like they couldn't even understand that if you take an orange and you squeeze it,
there's juice that comes.
They've probably never even eaten fruit.
Fruit didn't even exist to these people.
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 beverage.
There's 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 invent juice until the last couple hundred years or something
like that is complete asinine ludicracy.
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?
Yeah.
What do they serve?
A lot of fruit juice, the wedding punch, cranberry juice, their 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, they're at this party, they're all excited about drinking,
you know, 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.
You know, 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.
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 2, what it says in verse 7,
Jesus saith unto them, Fill the water-pots with water, and they fill them up to the brim.
And they saith unto 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 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 saith unto
him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine, and when men have well drunk, then
that which is worse, but thou hast kept the good wine until now.
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 to 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, drank, drunk.
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 are
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 it up.
College frat boy Jesus.
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 231-BABDIS, 231-BABDIS.
Even our phone number's got that bias, and you know what?
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 servant 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 crew.
It's down there at the bottom, Brother Tim, if you look in our sheet, it's Pastor Shelley
Cripps, there's the One Minute Apologist, there's The Beat by Alan Parr, and then I
want to go to our favorite false prophet, Ray Comfort, of Dead Water, I mean Living
Waters or Bourbon Waters, I don't know what you call it.
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.
Apologetic 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, nope, it's fine to drink in moderation, right?
Just a resounding message here is going to be coming from all of these guys, "No, drinking
is fine in moderation.
You just can't get drunk.
Don't get drunk."
But again, where's the line to that?
Let's hear it from another guy, another popular YouTuber.
Is 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 A, 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.
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.
Right.
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.
Yes.
Yeah.
I thought you were going to get on that one.
No, I thought I'd just let it go because it was a little corny.
Right.
Yeah.
There's nothing wrong with drinking as drunken as the Bible condemns, you know.
Right.
I don't drink alcohol because, mainly because it's poison.
You know, if you ask a chemist, "What is alcohol?"
What is...
It contains toxins.
Right.
When someone gets intoxicated, they are poisoned.
And your body tells you, it 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 of your poisons down there.
And yeah, people drink and, you know, they say, I'd never say, they say, don't drink
and drive.
They never say don't drink.
Right.
There's, alcohol is the only.
Now here's what's so crazy about this clip.
He literally asks, he says, oh, there's nothing, 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 buddies just making jokes about it.
"Oh, this guy's never had a drink of any liquid in his life."
Yeah, I know.
The guy sounds...
I mean, he sounds like a queer.
Feminine, queer.
I mean, 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.
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 a 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.
Oh, that was wine into water, it was a mistake.
Right.
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.
You know, I'm, 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, you know, and I just don't
drink a beer myself, you know, yeah, I'll drink it.
Now here's what's crazy.
He is suggesting that, oh, you know, alcohol is not a sin, drink it in faith.
So yeah, the problem is not that you drink poisonous substances that hurt you.
It's the fact that you weren't drinking the poison in faith, you know, or food poisonings
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've 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.
Now 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 of 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 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 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 music.
We got The Beats over here.
Yeah, I noticed that about every clip.
With Alan Parr.
I mean, this is kind of some catchy music.
Every clip's got the music.
And then it's just like, hey, is Rick 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 we, you
know, there's nothing wrong with Pfizer.
We just want to make it.
It's like they're all falling over themselves.
Like don't stop buying alcohol, you know, 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 Paul, just guys, these Alan pars, we're going to show a clip from
a Jeff, uh, uh, just Jefferson Bethke, sorry, Jefferson Bethke guy.
He's like self proclaimed men of God, Ray Comfort, self proclaimed men of God.
They're just reiterating the same message is coming from these other pastors, pastor
bourbon pastor.
I think you had a clip from, uh, another guy, Jeff or I'm sorry, John Piper.
Yeah.
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.
They 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, you know, fruit juice or whatever.
It's definitely alcohol and everything like that.
So let's play this last little section of his clip.
Because kids buy them and they use them because there's so much alcohol in them.
Right.
You know, and it does warm the stomach.
You know, I think the problem with this whole issue, and I think the problem that 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.
Hebrews 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, and those are just a few passages.
Isn't it in Proverbs that it says that someone's dying, give them alcohol, give them a drink?
I think it does, because it'll speed up the process.
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 in my Father's Kingdom."
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 far.
So they're saying it's so tragic that people try to make this argument
that wine is actually fruit juice at some times.
Challenge accepted. He said you cannot defend our position.
You cannot show it 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 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 5, 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 this 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 5 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 merry
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 1.
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 just ignorant that this is even in the Bible.
But in Proverbs 23, the Bible says, "Who hath woe, who hath sorrow, 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 this 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 to
start moving itself? I have not observed that, no. So if we're going to talk about juice moving
itself, what do you think's being described there? I would imagine fermentation, the fermentation
process, perhaps. I mean, is there any other possibility? Have you thought of anything else?
Are we 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?
Yeah, I mean, 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 a 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 mass. 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 welches and then it's just like superhuman 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 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. Yeah, your expired food, maybe, you know, something that went bad in the fridge. If you
pray over it, then, you know, 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. You know,
they think it's weird, like they act like this argument that we're making is so absurd.
You have Joel chapter three, 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. Well, 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 a spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate."
So the juice just doesn't even exist, but the Bible mentions it?
It wasn't invented. Oh, okay. 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 in reference 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 Daniel's 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 blaspheming the Bible by saying,
"Jesus didn't 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 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
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 five percent,
maybe less or more depending on if it's a light beer or whatever. But around five percent alcohol,
whereas sometimes wine could be 12, 14 percent. But even just a five percent beer, a thimble full,
so we're not even talking like a full shot glass, it had a dramatic difference in the typist ability
just to type. And people are taking, you know, they're drinking multiple beers, going out 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 is 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 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. 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 the Bible even
talks about the 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, you know,
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 little, in their desk or they'll have vodka
or they'll have rum or they'll, 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 Proverb 23 and I think the Bible makes
a clear distinction when it is alcoholic and non-alcoholic. Well, you know, obviously everyone's
got to pass 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 and it don't take you overnight to become an alcoholic but it will get you
and uh it's it's just like I mean if you read Proverbs 23 it's just dead on to what 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 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 uh popularized it's considered
attractive it's cool and you know again we appreciate you sharing with us uh your testimony
that Proverbs 23 you know it's still true in the Bible even when it was written with David's time
all the way to now it's still 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 drunken also
that thou mayst 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 2 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 uh you know alcohol there's 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 felt peer pressure and whatnot like that.
But you're definitely, like you was talking earlier,
you lose your judgment and fairly quickly.
So then what's to stop you from another and another
and another and another?
You just keep going and then you lose your memories.
You don't remember what you've done.
- Right, so you might think I only have--
- You become a victim when you don't know what's going on.
- Sure, I mean, you might decide
you only can 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, we really appreciate you coming on the show
with us, Brian, and talking with us.
- Let me add one thing.
There 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, them billboards have curves lined up there
and this, that, and the other?
- Yeah.
- I don't even look at them.
I won't even look at them.
- Hey, that's great. - They just stuff me.
- Yeah, I don't even like going down the aisle
at the store 'cause 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 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 Berbin again.
- In verse 15.
- 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, transitioning from that is due to only 14
'cause we're talking about parties
where we're just inviting people to get drunk.
That's what a lot of people wanna turn Deuteronomy 14 into
but let's address this passage here.
- I can't wait for you to address this.
- I think that--
- Please do.
- You know, of course people wanna twist the Bible
and they wanna 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 wanna 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 lest of that.
Now to give you context,
the Bible's 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 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 26,
it's saying when you bring that money,
you can bestow that money
for whatsoever thy soul lusteth 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 in 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 bracket 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, 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.
Okay, 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 sole desire,
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 call above the liver
and all the fat and all the N words,
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 seven,
the Bible says this, "And the drink offering,
"thereof shall be the fourth part of an hen
"for the one lamb, and the holy place,
"thou shalt cause the strong wine to be poured
"unto the Lord for a drink offering."
So the Bible talks about this 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 that's 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, here's, let's follow up on your answers, okay?
What color is blood when it's poured out?
- Red.
Now, what was, when we talk 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 spilled,
was literally poured out for us?
In John chapter number 19, his side was pierced,
and what came out?
Water and blood.
- Water and blood.
- And that's a great illustration
of the Old Testament sacrifice,
illustrating what Jesus is gonna do for us,
where his blood is gonna be spilled.
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,
it's illustrating how his blood was shed,
filled with our sin.
It's being cleansed in our sin, in fact.
The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin,
is what the Bible says.
And so it makes it very poetic to have these poor 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?
That makes me think of Micah 2,
where the Bible says, "Have a man walking in the Spirit,
and false to 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 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 gonna ask you point blank,
alcoholic or not in verse 26?
- The strong drink, I believe is alcohol.
- Alcohol, okay.
Just wanted to make sure I heard you correctly there.
I wanna 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 seven,
Numbers 28, verse seven,
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 gonna look at verse number nine,
it says, "And the Lord spake," verse eight, excuse me,
"And the Lord spake unto Weren, saying,"
now we're verse nine,
"Do not drink wine, nor strong drink,
"thou nor thy sons with thee,
"when you 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 the eat there is just so he's,
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 to sacrifice,
it'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 wanna be dissing them.
So let's bring on our next caller and pardon me,
I don't have the name,
so you're gonna 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, SetFastOKC.
- I've never heard of this person.
- Who is 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.
- All right, Cameron, you're gonna 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 gonna pull up,
but you guys pretty much hit 'em all.
I don't have necessarily a huge firsthand experience
with alcohol.
I grew up, both my parents didn't drink.
My family is 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 could drink now legally."
And I'm 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.
But 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.
But the Bible literally calls it a poison.
And I had preached on this at one point
where when it talks about who has contentions and woe
and on and on, one of the things it says in there
is who has 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.
And 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 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's gonna be impacted.
So I think that's a great parallel there
that comparing spiritual to spiritual
with the redness of eyes.
And the Bible, as much as people wanna knock,
it's a literal science book.
I mean, it literally tells us 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 that alcohol and coffee both suck.
And I'll die on that hill.
I'm not gonna force myself to acquire a taste
of something that's awful.
I don't wanna force myself
to just enjoy something that's gross.
- This is probably like Indian food and crickets.
- I'm gonna quit the show in like five seconds here.
- Yeah, I mean, well again,
why would I wanna 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.
Why would I wanna 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,
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're drinking so much more liquid
than they would normally do doing any other activity.
Yeah, I mean, 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,
a hundred dollars on high quote unquote upscale alcohol.
And look, it's a huge cost on your wallet
and it doesn't stop there
because it's gonna cost you your life.
It's gonna cost you potentially being raped by a sodomite.
I mean, the times that we see in "Habakkuk 2"
and "Genesis 9", right?
Matter of fact, the first time we see alcohol in the Bible
is "Genesis 9", and look what happens there
in that sodomitic act with Ham.
It's gonna destroy your relationships.
People wanna make this huge deal
about COVID and everything, right?
The CDC.
But on these statistics that I had pulled up and looked at,
in 2019, there were 156,000 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 just 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,
driving people to the liquor store
and getting them all boozed up.
I mean, you're turning water into wine, buddy.
- That's what he did in John 2.
- Served alcohol to a bunch of 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.
'Cause you talked about it, 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.
The only spirit I want is the Holy Spirit.
And the Bible says in Ephesians,
"Be not drunk with wine wherein is 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 wanna bring up
the quote positive verses 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 somebody,
maybe it was Middle Eastern, do you know another--
- Maybe it was some other--
- Are you friends with another--
- 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 Jews?
- Yeah, I know what you're talking about and yes it is.
It's a very clear mention there of Jews in Genesis.
- Well think about this,
I'll throw something out for you guys real quick.
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,
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,
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.
Now 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 absurd, but even in Genesis 40,
this is the verse I was thinking of, verse 11,
it says, "And 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 in Jesus' time.
- Well, did they forget the technology of squeezing a grape
from the book of Genesis?
I mean, is that really the type of scholarship
and the type of doctrine we have?
- It's juice and pants, right?
Juice and pants.
- Yeah, they hadn't invented pants either.
- In the Bible, right?
- They hadn't invented men or women.
- So it's just, everyone was just like Scottish.
They were just like kilts and drinking all the time.
- Yeah, everybody was just--
- That's the Bible to Jehovah's.
- Everybody was a flat earth drunkard wearing a skirt.
I mean, 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,
which is just ignore what the Bible clearly teaches,
clearly says.
Well, praise the Lord that you've overcome
the horrible taste of horse piss
and you decided not to get the acquired taste
for coffee or rock.
I think we lost some viewers when we brought up coffee,
but you know what I say, amen.
So that's okay 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 wanna leave this with this.
Beans belong in chili,
and so I've at least made that known.
- That must be coming from the few times he drank alcohol.
- You had his favor and then you just lost it, Gavin.
He was on your side.
- You have a good night.
- All right, now I really think
we could talk about this forever,
but I feel like we kind of need to conclude.
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,
or you're confused about, or you're not sure,
I've heard this a lot, that Jesus drank wine.
Have you heard that one?
- I have.
- People say, oh, how could it be wrong if Jesus drank wine?
But 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 says 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 he's basically talking about in the future.
So from that, you kind of indirectly get the statement
that he had drank 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 1 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.
It would be 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 white.
I mean, 'cause 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
'cause 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 to wine,
and then you see this verbiage also,
not given to 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 that it's foolish
to say, oh, it doesn't say anything wrong with drinking
'cause it just says something about being drunk.
That'd be the same logic as saying,
it's okay for me to beat someone up
because the Bible says thou shalt not kill.
It doesn't say thou shalt not beat him up.
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's 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, don't have,
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 malalign 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 two verses.
I personally believe though
that the wine that's being described is 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 he's 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-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, you know,
he has to have the Benny Hensuit 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,
you know, he can't really survive without it.
He just has to have it.
Whereas, you know, with the apostle Paul,
he has times where he's abounding
and then he has times where he's, you know, 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 probably in most cases to just try to avoid it at best.
But 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 deacons just saying,
well, maybe the deacon, 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.
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's 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 pastor, they'll use chapter five now
'cause they'll use a little wine for their stomach's sake.
- That's right.
- And again, how is alcohol gonna 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 it's poison.
Ray Comfort tells us it's poison.
- Ray Comfort even if it's said.
- Yet then he wants to drink it.
So what do you say about those interpretations of Timothy?
What do you think about the qualifications of a bishop?
- I think when the text says in 1 Timothy 3
that the key for me in verse 3, not given to wine.
That's what makes me side pretty much 100%
with the interpretation that it's in reference
to the grape juice here and also in Titus chapter 1
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 1 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 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 gonna 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 it 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
'cause 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 your drunkenness?
I mean, this is just a sad--
- The Bible says, the Bible calls it shameful spewing.
- Yeah, the Bible says that the tables are all full
of vomit and it talks about it being shameful,
being staggering, stumbling, saying perverted things.
I mean, these are all the attributes we see
from alcohol and 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 gonna go ahead and say no verses.
I'm just not gonna bring up,
I'm gonna bring up verses
about every creature of God is good.
(laughing)
- Preposterous.
- When he said verse number four, I'm thinking like,
"I don't know where he's going with this."
- Yeah, I thought the same thing as well.
I wanna end with this 'cause Pastor Shelley,
if you don't tame the broadcast here,
will go till midnight.
So I wanna 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, "Well, 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 gonna hurt me.
"I'll go to that party with the alcohol.
"My friends told me it would be okay.
"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.
It's possible for you to then struggle with it.
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 wanna take for granted
the fact that it doesn't tempt you,
'cause it will if you decide to indulge in it regardless.
- Well, I really appreciate people for tuning on
for our podcast.
We're gonna have our new feature, the call-in feature.
I really like the call-in feature.
We're gonna 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 wanna turn him in today,
but rather we keep him pure, we keep our Bible pure,
we keep our wine and our drink pure.
Well, that's gonna 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.