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3+ million die from alcohol per year – says World Health Organization

More than 3 million people died as a result of harmful use of alcohol in 2016, according a report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) today. This represents 1 in 20 deaths. More than three quarters of these deaths were among men. Overall, the harmful use of alcohol causes more than 5% of the global disease burden.

WHO’s Global status report on alcohol and health 2018 presents a comprehensive picture of alcohol consumption and the disease burden attributable to alcohol worldwide. It also describes what countries are doing to reduce this burden.

World Health Organization, News Release 21 Sep. 2018, “Harmful use of alcohol kills more than 3 million people each year, most of them men“

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Grape juice already called YAYIN (wine) in the press!

יין Yayin did not first become “wine” only if it fermented later, after it was pressed. Both simple grape juice and intoxicating juice were called yayin in the original Hebrew of the Old Testament.

(Both were called οινος oinos in the original Greek of the New Testament.)

See also: Shekhar – meaning sweet drink or strong drink in Bible? (Deut 14:26)

(And: broad meaning of wine (yayin) – documented.)

Nobody is denying yayin was intoxicating (sometimes anyway). Nobody is denying that “{yayin} wine is a mocker…” (Prov. 20:1) Indeed, Levitical priests who drank at all in God’s house were even threatened with capital punishment.* With clear minds, they could distinguish between the holy and the unholy (Lev. 10:9).

*Now unrepentant persons are put away from church membership, that is all. (1 Cor 5:2,9-13) Unless they repent of “envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these,” they will not inherit the kingdom of God! (Gal. 5:21)

But here see for yourself where YAYIN was NOT always intoxicating…

 

Continue reading “Grape juice already called YAYIN (wine) in the press!”

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Churches know boozy events exclude real men

I remember listening to a real man’s concerns who had acknowledged to me that he had become addicted to alcohol.He already wanted to quit drinking. He told me that he no longer even goes to the Christmas celebrations of his relatives. That is because he knows that alcohol would be present. He knows that if he attends, then he will resume his old drinking ways again. So he does not attend. But he feels excluded at most places (besides Alcoholics Anonymous meetings).

Then I asked myself – should a church (consciously or not) make others like him feel somehow excluded from any of its events in the same way?
The man is already self-conscious about this matter. Now should he have to blow a trumpet everywhere that he goes and announce: Hear ye, Hear ye, I am hopelessly addicted? I hope not! But deliberately or not, he is still made to feel unwelcome since he now wants to escape his old ways. Rather, he should be supported that he already wants to quit. Let us “bear one another’s burdens” and let me beware myself too. I must consider myself, lest I also be tempted by it.

“envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God….

Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

(Galatians 5:21; 6:1-2)

We are not of the night nor of darkness. I do hope all will agree that church events without any alcohol are never the worse because they are without it.

“The harp and the strings, The tambourine and flute, And wine are in their feasts; But they do not regard the work of the LORD, Nor consider the operation of His hands. Therefore my people have gone into captivity, Because they have no knowledge; Their honorable men are famished, And their multitude dried up with thirst.”

(Isaiah 5:12-13)

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FALSE: Jesus fails responsible serving of alcohol license?!

See: Bible says be sober again and again

“3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
4 For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.”

(2 Corinthians 11:3-4)

Re: “How did Jesus celebrate? With Sam Chan.” The event description says: “Did you know Jesus was accused of partying too hard?” The same event description is repeated from an earlier message of Sam Chan (4 Feb. 2018). I quote his very deceiving and shameful statements about another Jesus (supposedly) getting people drunk (and very drunk):

Continue reading “FALSE: Jesus fails responsible serving of alcohol license?!”

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Nephalism

Nephalism definition

Nephalism: teetotalism; total abstinence from consuming alcohol.

Nephalism: “total abstinence from alcoholic beverages” (Miriam-Webster Dictionary)

This term is of Greek origin, and found in Scripture.

Nephō: “to be free from the influence of intoxicants.” (Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words)

Nēphaleos: “of drink, unmixed with wine… sober … of persons” (Liddell and Scott Lexicon)

Nephalism examples in Scripture

“Old men must be {νηφαλίους} teetotal…” (Titus 2:2)

Deaconesses: these women must be “{νηφαλίους} teetotal, faithful in all things” (1 Timothy 3:11)

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Increase drinking age to save lives says Australian Medical Association

“…every day we see the devastating results in emergency departments” AMA Queensland President Dr Chris Zappala said.

Trading Hour Push Ahead of Summer Drinks Toll, Australian Medical Association Queensland Media Release 2015.

In 2009, Australian Medical Association Queensland president Dr Mason Stevenson said the surge in teenage binge drinking has worrying implications for Australia, as that generation carries their bad drinking habits into adulthood.
“We are going to expect a substantially increased rate of alcoholism,” he said.
Prompted by such concerns, one Queensland school – St Edmund’s College in Ipswich – is proposing to randomly breath-test students arriving at the school dance.
Mason suggests an even more radical intervention. “There is a cogent argument for increasing the legal age of drinking in Australia from 18 to 21,” he said. “You also as a result of that policy would save 100 Australian lives every year and an extra 1000 from severe maiming and permanent injury.
“On medical grounds, it’s a no-brainer.”

Melanie Christiansen, “Queensland’s serious alcohol problem revealed”, The Courier-Mail, October 17, 2009

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Aboriginal Elder Joe Brown calling for total grog ban at Kurnangki

‘Aboriginal elder Joe Brown, 63, a leader of Kurnangki, one of three communities bordering the town centre, said children as young as 12 were into drugs and alcohol.

“We should have a total grog ban,” he said.

Mr Brown, whose 25-year-old son committed suicide last year, said he did not want the army brought in to WA but supported extending to the state the total alcohol bans being proposed in the territory.

Marra Worra Worra Aboriginal Corporation chairman Ivan McPhee, an elder, said the situation in the town was getting worse. He wants tougher alcohol restrictions, including a total ban on takeaway sales, and says the issues are the same as those confronting most of the Kimberley.

“Our kids are going out of control, wandering around with no jobs,” he said. “We are losing a lot of young people to alcohol and drugs. We never heard anything about hanging until drugs and alcohol came.

“We are having a funeral every day. A lot of people are talking about (child sex abuse). We are hearing things about rape.”’

Jessica Strutt, ‘Elders call for more alcohol bans’, The Age, 14 July 2007.

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Thank Christ for sober aboriginal ladies!

58.2 % of indigenous women (aged 18+) do not drink alcohol. Thank God these women had never consumed alcohol (or at least not within a week of the survey).

‘In 2004–05, Indigenous people aged 18 years and over were more likely than non-Indigenous people to abstain from drinking alcohol.’

The Health and Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, 2008, Ch. 8, Health Risk Factors, p. 141-142.

‘Women may be abstainers for a variety of reasons. Christianity is frequently a reason proffered by Aboriginal women to explain their non-drinking status, and they form the core of participants in the variety of Christian churches and movements across Aboriginal Australia. At Yalata in South Australia, for example, a new Aboriginal-controlled Christian movement provoked many drinkers to stop their alcohol use and gave encouragement to women non-drinkers in their efforts to curb the importation of alcohol into the community (Brady & Palmer 1988). The adoption of the perceived ‘Christian life’ is a way in which Aboriginal people may legitimise their abandonment of drinking (cf. Neich & Park 1988).
Other women say that they cannot drink because they have to care for their families, or even for their drinking husbands. Evidence given to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1988 suggested that whereas Aboriginal men had ‘learned’ their drinking habits from the hard, binge-drinking white stockmen, Aboriginal women encountered, or worked for, white women who were mainly missionaries’ or pastoralists’ wives, who tended not to drink alcohol (Alice Springs hearings, 7 October 1988, Dr C. Watson).
Women (and men) may give up drinking because of repeated encounters with gaol and the police (cf. Laurie & McGrath 1985)’

Alcohol Use and Its Effects Upon Aboriginal Women, Maggie Brady Visiting Research Fellow, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

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Ravi Zacharias rejected hotel industry to preach the Gospel

‘… as I was working in banquet management, I felt the hunger to speak for the Lord. I was a new Christian, and wherever I spoke things would happen. People would ask if I had ever considered that God had gifted me in the role of evangelism. It was natural to me, whether I was behind the pulpit or speaking with someone one-on-one. So I started taking part-time courses at a theological seminary in Toronto.

The more time I spent studying, the more I became restless in the hotel industry. This was especially true because liquor plays such an important role in the catering life. I had never even held a glass of it. Even before I was a believer, I had some disciplines that I kept, and for me personally, avoiding alcohol was certainly one of them. And when I saw the effect drinking had on some people, I thought, Is this what my life is going to be reduced to—dealing with something that I don’t even want to be responsible for on the other side of the counter? As I wrestled with that reality, the burden to preach grew greater and greater.

Indeed, as God would have it, preaching opportunities came from hither and yon. So with this struggle in my heart, I informed my parents that I was going to give up my career in business. It would have been a very good career, for I was working for a major worldwide hotel chain. But I felt God’s increasing call on my life—the pressure in the soul, as it were—to proclaim and to preach the gospel, although I didn’t know what shape this call would take.’

Ravi Zacharias, The Fingerprints on Your Soul, 15 Dec. 2003

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Laestadian Lutherans for sober living, not drinking alcohol

See also: Bible says be sober again and again.

‘Sober living has always been part of Christian morality. The Scripture warns of the dangers of alcohol and other intoxicants. It teaches that the power of alcohol wars against the will and power of God (Isa. 5:11, 12; 1Cor. 6:10; Eph. 5:18).
The use of intoxicants causes immeasurable suffering and hardship in our society, affecting not only the user, but also others around them. Individuals in the public eye, including elected officials, civil servants, and educators, can teach the value of a positive, unimpaired lifestyle by providing an example of sober living in their own lives.’

Laestadian Lutheran Church, Position Statements, Section 3, July 2006.

God’s Word Warns Us

God’s Word instructs people about living a sober lifestyle. Apostle Paul wrote, “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” (Titus 2:11,12). The instruction to live soberly has a much more broad application than simply warning about the dangers of alcohol and other intoxicants. However, it certainly includes the warning about the use of these substances.
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