When was the last time you learnt something new?

I admit that I am a bad learner - I dislike not being fluent with whatever I do.

Written by Kong Hee on May 2, 2009

At its 36th Bi-Annual National Conference held on April 23-24, 2007, the Assemblies of God in Australia introduced a new code allowing AG pastors to consume alcohol. However it also urged extreme caution when drinking, and highlighted that drunkenness is prohibited.

According to the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, throughout the first 1,800 years of church history, Christians consumed alcoholic beverages as a common part of everyday life and nearly always used wine (fermented grape juice) in the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper. Many of the early church fathers allowed wine drinking in moderation. The Catholic Church requires properly fermented wine in their Eucharist. The Reformers from Luther and Calvin to Zwingli and Knox strongly supported the enjoyment of wine as a biblical blessing. It was said that Calvin’s annual salary in Geneva included seven barrels of wine. Even the conservative and strict English Puritans were temperate partakers of wine and ale, which they considered as “God’s good gifts.” It was in the mid-1800s when some Protestant Christians moved from this historic position of allowing moderate use of alcohol to the total prohibiting of all drinking.

Are Christians allowed to drink wine and beverages that contain alcohol? Let us look at some standard objections against drinking of alcoholic beverages:

May 2009 has been our Holy Spirit month at C3 Crawley. We are very aware that the Spirit is our everyday connection with the Almighty God – the Spirit IS God!

One of the goals for our church is that we would see 50+ people filled with this Spirit in such a way that they speak in tongues for the first time. Speaking in tongues is not like a Scouts badge – some form of achievement – instead it is simply an intimate method of prayer. As we have made space in our services this month for the Holy Spirit to minister to us and through us, many people have been abundantly blessed.

Here is a testimony from one of those meetings:

For those of us who aren’t really the science whizz it’s easy to just assume that those much smarter than us have developed super theories that must be in conflict with belief in God. I can’t help but wonder where this stereotype came from.

The first core origins of science came from Christian roots. Science arose out of a belief of a rational God and therefore for His creation to make sense.  The greatest scientific discoveries of our time have been made not by skeptics but by great Christian minds that publically devoted their work to the glory of God. Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Galileo, Michael Faraday and Leonardo DaVinci we’re not only renowned as scientists but influential Christians; they were powerful men of faith. As a great man of faith Albert Einstein once said “I want to know Gods thought, the rest are just details”. As a rock founder of modern science who shaped the very views we say oppose God saw science as merely the details of how God made such an awesome creation.