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Chosen no: R-509 a, from: 1883 Year. |
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The Bread And The Wine.
EDITOR WATCH TOWER:--I
read your article in the April number upon "The Passover," and am
well pleased with it. I believe the Lord's Supper is the Christian's substitute
for the Jewish Passover, and should be observed annually; but upon one
point you did not speak out. I refer to the kind of wine to be used
in this Supper. You suggested that "unleavened bread" be used, which
I think is perfectly correct, but I ask, What kind of wine should be
used? You teach correctly, I think, that leaven is the type of sin, etc., and therefore not a fit type of Christ's purity. I think
the same of fermented, or leavened wine. It is not pure, and therefore
not a fit emblem of Christ's blood! But you did not teach us that we
ought to use fresh, pure wine instead of the kind that "biteth like
a serpent and stingeth like an adder."
Can any substance be a proper emblem of
Christ's pure and precious blood after that substance has
fermented and becomes poisonous? I conclude that good wine is
just as important to a proper celebration of the Lord's Supper as unleavened
bread. Hoping you will think and speak of these things, I am
yours truly. P. D. LANE.
OUR RESPONSE.
In our desire to do nothing to hinder the cause
of Total Abstinence, with which we sympathize, we have heretofore refrained
from commenting specially on the subject mentioned above, but a number of
inquiries, recently, show that the subject is active and needs a reply.
We remark first, that there are many things
about our climate and the restless, excited methods of our day, which almost
inevitably lead men to excessive use of intoxicating liquors when once its
use is commenced. Not only so, but it seems evident that most of the
intoxicating liquors, manufactured at the present time, are drugged and
adulterated in a manner that greatly increases the dangers and evils resulting
from their use.
For these reasons we give the
Prohibitionists our sympathy, either in the enforcement of the present laws
against those who adulterate liquors, or we should rejoice if they be able
(which we doubt) to procure the enactment of new laws which would entirely stop
its manufacture and sale. But this, we think, will not be accomplished until
the prince of this world--Satan--is bound.
But notwithstanding our sympathy
--notwithstanding also our knowledge of the fact that the sympathies and prejudices, too, of a majority of our readers is on the side of Total Abstinence --yet, if
we speak, it must be what we consider truth--truth, no matter whose idol is
broken or whose theories suffer; and here it is:
The claim is often repeated by zealous
temperance advocates, that the Bible never countenances the use of intoxicating wine. They say that the wine Jesus made and drank was simply grape juice and
not wine, and that a different Greek word is used when referring to these
different liquors. We answer that this is a mistake. The Greek word gleukos, which means grape juice or "new wine," occurs but once in the
New Testament (Acts 2:13), and its use there
indicates that, if used to excess, it would confuse the mind. The word from
which wine is translated, in every other instance in the New Testament, is oinos, and signifies grape wine of the usual sort, which always intoxicates
when used to excess.
As to whether oinos will intoxicate
please note the following texts: "Be not drunk with wine, oinos, wherein is excess." Eph. 5:18. See also 1 Pet. 4:3; Luke 1:15and
7:33,34.
But, it is suggested, that if wine contains the
elements of leaven it would prove that it was not what Jesus used in
instituting "the Supper." We will admit, that if this were so,
it would prove what is claimed; but it is not so. Temperance orators may and
do, make this statement, doubtless often ignorantly, but scientific men
recognize quite a difference between alcoholic or vinous fermentation
and putrefactive fermentation. The result of the former process is to
cast out impurities and produce a sweet and pleasant liquid as in wine, while
the other process produces sourness and ultimately rottenness. This last
process is employed in leavening bread, the decay or fungus growth being arrested in its very early development by baking.
So far as the Jewish custom is concerned, it
disproves instead of proves the claim that wine contains the leaven quality, for the Jews use wine at the Passover and put away leaven. They use
the REAL wine. The claim that unfermented grape-juice was what the Lord
used, we can see to be incorrect in another way: The vintage season in Palestine was September
and October, and the Passover was about six months later. The wine made in
October would of necessity be fermented before April.
The testimony of Jesus is that old wine
is better than new (Luke 5:39; John 2:10); and the fact that the wine they used
did ferment, is shown by the parable concerning the putting of new wine (in
which alcoholic fermentation was not finished) into old bottles [skins] which
had been used before, and, having lost their elasticity, would burst under the
expansion of gasses caused by the ferment.
But, as before remarked, the circumstances,
climate, etc., here, as well as the purity of the liquors, differ much from
those of Jesus and the Apostles; and if any one should feel himself endangered
by tasting wine at the remembrance of our Lord's death, we would [R509 : page 7] recommend that such a one should
use raisin-juice instead, which, though not wine, is certainly a "fruit of
the vine." We provide the raisin-juice every year, but it was used by only
one person at our last celebration of the Supper.
W.T. R-509a : page 6 - 1883r