Verse 1
"Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler; And whosoever erreth thereby is not wise."
Alcoholic beverages are today ruining America. It is not only unwise to err in the use of them, but it is sinful also. Yes, Jesus used wine. It had a 4 percent alcoholic content, and even then was, in all probability diluted. See pp. 102,103 in my commentary on Proverbs. The high-powered wine marketed today has up to 18 percent alcoholic content. Nothing is any more misleading than the allegation (true enough) that Jesus made eighty gallons of wine at the wedding in Cana; because that stuff which Gallo makes today is nearly five times as powerful.
Oh, but how about beer? The Anchor Bible renders this verse as: "Wine makes men insolent; beer makes them boisterous; no one who staggers drunkenly is wise."[1] The myth that the government cannot limit the use of this poison as a beverage is, of course, false. The Arabian countries can and do prohibit it.
The silliest thing that this writer has witnessed in his eighty-eight years of life is the hysterical efforts of the government to prohibit smoking, while at the same time actually encouraging the consumption of alcohol, which is a hundred times more dangerous. Yes, if a man smokes a pack of cigarettes every day for twenty years, he may get lung cancer; but, not long ago, in Houston, Texas, a teen-aged driver had a few beers at a party, loaded his car up with friends, hit a bridge column and killed five of them, not in twenty-years, but in one afternoon! Fifty thousand funerals a year, besides billions of dollars in damage, is too high a price to pay for the palaces of the liquor barons. God help America to wake up!
Let it be noted here that nothing is said about "excess drinking." It is drinking which is condemned. The very nature of alcohol is such that any consumption of it almost invariably leads to excess. Paul's instructions to Timothy to, "Drink no longer water, but a little wine for thy stomach's sake" (1 Timothy 5:23) did not mean that Timothy would never drink any more water, but that he would stop being a teetotaler. And regardless of what some social-drinking Christians think about it, the true and holy standard of Christian living is simply: "Don't touch alcoholic beverages, except as a medicinal requirement." The apostle to the Gentiles made this perfectly clear.
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