p. 2 | 3929 - Drinking Wine by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 3, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 47.

3929 — Drinking Wine

By Editor

Please explain 1 Tim. 5:23, regarding wine. A Subscriber.

The text reads, "Be no longer a drinker of water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities." There are two kinds of wine mentioned in the Bible — all agree to this — the pure juice of the grape and the fermented juice. Persumably, when the apostle is an inculcator of sobriety and temperance in all his writings, he did not advise Timothy to do anything, or drink anything, that would make him a drunkard.

Secondly, Timothy evidently had trouble. He was not a strong man. The apostle's words indicate that not only as regards his stomach was he troubled, but had also other infirmities. The water of those Eastern lands was many times notoriously bad, and the apostle advised Timothy, not for indulgence in something which he particularly loved, but something that he would utterly abstain from so as to give no excuse for even the appearance of evil, to take a little wine as that which would be beneficial in his case. There is nothing in it in any way to foster intemperance, or to give an excuse for one indulging to satisfy an abnormal appetite.