[teejay]

ATlian has created unnecesary tantrums over the issues of wine here. In your thinking Jesus is an alcoholic. Now today I want to purposely inform you about the issue of wine.

You asked me about those churches that serve wine well this is what my take is. Some churches that were originally influenced by the teetotalers but which then forgot their history argue that the Bible has always meant unfermented grape juice when it talked about Communion. They insist that all references to wine are really references to new wine, unfermented grape juice. While their argument might not be very compelling, their practice of serving grape juice is perfectly acceptable.

In the Greek New Testament two words are used for wine/grape juice. One is gleukus, literally "the sugar stuff" (from glukos, sugar), which is typically translated new wine. The New Testament only refers to gleukus once, and it uses the term to describe people who were acting boisterously in public and who were supposedly drunk. Gleukus is roughly equivalent to the kind of wine that comes in a bottle with a screw-on cap, as opposed to the wine that comes in a bottle with a cork.

Every other reference to any kind of wine in the New Testament is to oinos, either by itself, or as "new" wine straight from the grape, or as "good" wine. From oinos (Latin oenus) we get the words wine, vine, vin, wino, vino, vintner, as well as the word for the study of wine, oenology. Oinos is wine/grape juice in all its forms. When used by itself in the New Testament, a little oinos can calm your stomach, but a cupful makes you drunk.

The phrase "good wine" is used only once in the New Testament. Jesus and his disciples happened to be in a village the day of a wedding. In that culture it was your duty to attend a wedding, and a major offense if you didn't. In a small village the addition of a dozen or more adults to the guest list is fairly significant, and they ran out of wine, another major offense.

Six stone washing vessels were nearby. Jesus had the servants fill them with water and take them to the wine-steward. When the guests tasted it, they asked the wine-steward why he had saved the "good wine" until so late in the wedding festivities. Some argue that this wine was unfermented or barely fermented grape juice, but to us that argument is not compelling.

New Wine:- There is only one context where the New Testament refers specifically to "new" wine, and there it is clearly referring to unfermented grape juice, straight from the grape. That was where Jesus referred to the everyday process of making wine from grape juice when drawing an analogy. The illustration is repeated several times, but that is the only way the New Testament refers explicitly to new wine.

In Jesus' day you preserved grape juice by putting it into new wineskins, leather bags usually made from the skins of young goats. As the grape juice aged and fermented, the gases it gave off stretched the wineskin. Since leather stretches, the wineskin holds the wine and you end up with "old" fermented wine in an old wineskin.
You would never put new, unfermented, wine into an old wineskin because the old wineskin had already been stretched out, and the expanding gases would burst the old wineskin. On the other hand, you would readily transfer old wine from one wineskin to another since it had lost its capacity to stretch a wineskin.

The church I got to does not serve fermented wine. It serves pure grape juice. I am still in the process of getting the procedure and the ingredients needed to make unfermented wine. The wine that Christ made at the wedding feast. The same Wine that He said was symbolic of his blood at the Lord’s super. Then He say that he will not partake of it until when he comes again and the wine is new (read unfermented.). Ref All Four Gospels.

According to Ralph Earle’s research based on Paul’s advice to Timothy, oinos is used in the Septuagint for both fermented and unfermented grape juice. Since it can mean either one, it is valid to insist that in some cases it may simply mean grape juice and not fermented wine.

...the Roman writer Cato, in his treatise On Agriculture, gave this prescription: "If you wish to keep new wine sweet the whole year round, put new wine in a jar, cover the stopper with pitch, place the jar in a fishpond, take it out after the thirtieth day; you will have sweet wine all the year round." ...

Does fermented wine have medicinal value? The present writer once put this question to a noted surgeon, the head of a department in a university medical school. His answer was an emphatic no.
One thing, of course, must be insisted on: Paul was not advocating the general use of wine as a beverage. The most that that can be said is that he was suggesting that Timothy, because of frequent stomach illness, should take "a little wine" as medicine. And the possibility is still open that the apostle referred to unfermented grape juice, which of course is good for a weak stomach. 1 Tim 5:23-Ralph Earle - Word Meanings in the New Testament, Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1986, on 1 Tim. 5:13.

I hope this little information will inspire you to study the bible ardently and with sincerity. You will find no contradiction that you always talk about. By the way reading carefully John 2:1-11, you will find that Christ and his entourage were invited guests and was only imperative that the host should have had more wine for the late arrivals. In the event that it ran out they could have easily ordered more wine from the neighborhood. But that was not the case the wine ran out on purpose. God’s son would not be an alcoholic and must not taste alcohol. No wonder all the organizers of the wedding had their thoughts stranded so as not to salvage the situation. Only unfermented wine would be Christ’s drink.

I will be giving you more on wine. In the meantime Study the bible. But first of all try to invite Christ in your life.