I swear on my stack of Journal of Discourses that I was taught this in SS. My teacher said that wine in the "old days" wasn't fermented like it is nowadays.

Pleeeeaaaasseee tell me I'm not the only one who remembers this...

I'm 25 and yes, I was taught this in seminary and by my father.

Its a bunch of crap in my crude opinion, because there are FAR too many accounts of people being drunk off their ass from wine in the bible.

I heard this a couple of times and I'm 30. I even had some companions that used it when I was a missionary when people asked about the contradiction of sacramental wine and WoW.

Never mind the explanation that is in the D&C about being afraid of getting poisoned by the Saints' enemies so they stopped buying wine and started using what they produced themselves and only later started using water. And never mind the part in 1 Nephi that said King Laban was a wine-bibber and got drunk on it. And never mind the part in Geneses when Noah gets drunk and walks around naked. I could go on.

The thing is, when you take grape juice and don't refrigerate it, it turns to wine. That's just basic chemistry. People preserved grape juice by making it into wine. Of course it was fermented.

But don't let things like, science, reason or history get in the way of a good Mormon myth.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/2011 11:23PM by NerdLinger.

Keep in mind, too, that water in the middle east is a scarce commodity and back in those times clean water was rare, indeed. Mixing wine into the water killed bacteria and made the water not used in cooking safe to drink . . . the nomadic tribes of Northern Africa, Eurasia and the middle eastern states still do this.

e.g. the Seventh-Day Adventists

And remember the wedding at Cana - Jesus turned water into grape juice so good that all the guests raved about it? Why not apple juice, or orange juice? or lemonade?

Maracuja juice beats all of those juices and is indeed the Lords chosen Juice. Plus Jesus does like his wine.

Maracuja juice -- I miss that stuff. When I was in Brasil, that stuff was the best.

When they taught me the word of wisdom I asked them about wine in the New Testament. They told me it was grape juice.

LOL Yes. I was told this too. So gullible we were back then.

I was raised as a Roman Catholic, but I recall when I was a kid in the 80s and my mom had joined a Bible-study group, the fundamentalist Protestants in the group insisted that the wine in the NT was only grape juice. My mom is Italian, so she was incredulous, to say the least! :-)

Me too.

I am 50 ish.

They told us the wine was grape juice. That mmm was an indian attack that was blamed on mormons. That there were too many women and not enough men, so polygamy was the only choice. That cain was cursed win blackness, and could never hold the priesthood.

They lied.

An investigator who came to church for the first time after studying for a few weeks, asked in investigators class why the Priest had to say the Sacrament prayer twice. It was explained that the prayer had to be word perfect because it was a revealed prayer and it was sacred.

He pointed out that the Book of Mormon says "wine" in the prayer as given by Christ and that the D&C used "wine" in that revealed prayer also.

And then he told us that if we could demand a young man to say it perfectly, but change the words AND use water, then we could not be trusted with other sacred things, and then he walked out never to return.

We all just kinda sat there for a little while.

I asked my mom why, if NT wine was really just grape juice that we didn't use grape juice in the sacrament. She said it was because water was more practical.

Oh! Me!!!! Mee!!! I was taught exactly that. Someone came up with that lame ass apologetic argument because people can't bear to think that Jesus and the Apostles drank alcoholic beverages. I think it helps Mormons to not think they're better than their savior, what with how we apparently hold to a higher standard than Jesus & all. I can't flippin' *WAIT* for someone to tell me that garbage to my face again....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2011 12:24AM by beeblequix.

I found an old mormon book at my mom's house. "The Story of Our Church" by Emma Marr Petersen. It was published in the 1950s. I was bored a couple of weeks ago and started reading through it. I laughed out loud when I read the part about wine not being fermented. It was just "grape juice". You are definitely not the only one taught this.

There are fundamentalist Christians who believe that, but I did hear that in the Mormon church as well.

Speaking of sacrament, last night I went to a cordial tasting, and the cups we used were similar to the tiny sacrament cups used in the Mormon church. The blackberry brandy looked a lot like communion wine in those cups.

haha yep, I was taught that by my mother when I was little. I said, "Mommy jesus drank wine? Why can't people drink wine?" and she said, "oh no dear, there was no alcohol in it. It was just grape juice."

Yeppers. I never believed it, chocked it up as dogma BS.

Even though it was soporific.

And check out the extremely leading questions at the end :

1. The Lord gave Noah a sign, or reminder, of the covenant He made. The sign helped Noah remember how merciful the Lord was to him. Write about something that reminds you how merciful the Lord is to you.

2. How can the sacrament be to us what the rainbow was to Noah?

There are a lot of fascinating things worth discussing about the Noah story, whether you're a Christian, atheist, anthropologist or just generally curious, but these two issues are several thousand miles below the bottom of the list. Dull or what?

Just more evidence of TSCC's "deadening" effect



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2011 08:44AM by Soft Machine.

Wine has been made the same way over 10000000 years ago, and it was wine that they used back then! LDS inc. needs to stop using water and use wine, if they want to be right with the teachings, and it was fermented too!

Welch's had a factory just outside the garden of Gethsemane. Get a clue people! :)

Ron

I was always told that the Hebrew word for wine and grape juice was the same, so it wasn't an issue. See?

Then I became a Hebrew linguist and found out that was not true. Then I started to think for myself...and found out many other things that weren't true.

And were you perchance on an aircrew?

Yes, Air Force...non-aircrew though

I was told wine was grape juice in church, but really didnt buy into it. I thought, much like nwmcare mentioned, wine was made to make water safe to drink.

Omen .. What is the word for wine and grape juice in Hebrew?

I know a lot of what the bible says, depends on how it is translated and by who.

He was talking in conference once, and said something like, "When Jesus was sharing wine... Er, uh,... Grape juice... with his apostles at the Last Supper, he said...

I couldn't believe it. He actually caught himself and changed it to "grape juice."

Funny how Mormons reverse-construct stuff like that: Joe Smith said not to drink alcohol, so that must mean wine. If he said it was wrong, what would Jebus have done? He must not have drunk it either, but it's in the Bible. Clearly, the Bible must be wrong. It had to have been something else. Grape juice, perhaps.

It's insane.

It was produced in Southern Utah (Toquerville was one of the places). My understanding was that even back then in a much smaller church, the logistics were just too much of a challenge. Whatever the case, the church divested itself of the vineyards and they used them to make commercial juice. I don't know if that is still the case, but I've known several people who lived by the original vineyards.

Mormons have such a selective memory.

Once a missionary gave me his copy of BOM with comments and stickers in it and everything, he said I could keep it. On the page where "wine" was mentioned he drew an arrow pointing from "wine" away from the text and wrote "H20" on the other end of the arrow. wine=water!! I laughed

Hahaha I even used that argument myself, parroted perfectly, as it had been told to me growing up.

As it means that every time the Bible or BoM mentions "wine" we can firmly place the event to have taken place in the fall. After the grape harvest, but before the juice fermented.

Pull that one out in church, or with family, sometime and see how it flys.

I'm 58 and I was told that from as far back as I can remember. I don't know if they teach it as much now. Or probably just ignore it or go around it like they do with so many other things Mormon.

After I left the morg I started reading the Bible. I showed my dh where it talks about Jesus turning the water to wine,His first miracle. Dh talked to me like I was 5 again....'now remember,wine back then was just grape juice' Sure,sure.

Of course, had it been beer, the cult would say it was actually root beer.

Timothy

Timothy,

Would you go back to church if they used beer for the sacrament?

Cups are too small.

Timothy

Understand, QoD, that the last time I quit drinking beer, Budwieser had to lay-off twenty-five people.

Those folks have families and mortgages and s**t. I simply couldn't live with myself.

Timothy: Keeping The Economy Afloat One Six-Pack At A Time!

I was taught this as well. IIRC when Jesus served his followers wine at the last supper, it was in the spring (April?). There was no way that they could have had fresh grape juice at that time in the growing season. So it had to have been wine juice that was bottled at least several months earlier. This means that it would have fermented and turned into wine by the time Jesus served it.

Jesus would not be able to pass a temple recomment interview.

Another myth is the common assertion often told in church to explain the scriptures where Jesus drank wine which violates the WOW. The response given in the LDS church (and often by other Christian churches) is that the wine Jesus drank was simply grape juice and not regular fermented alcoholic wine. That’s simply a fairy tale made up to discourage people from drinking any alcohol or even to show that the WOW is real revelation.

The first miracle that Jesus performed was to turn water into wine. There’s no evidence to show that he turned water into only grape juice. Also, why would he turn water into wine if he thought drinking wine was evil? Even this pastor says to suggest that the wine Jesus drank was grape juice is insulting to your intelligence:

http://www.wesleyan.org/doc/WL2009Spring_Why_Jesus_Drank_and_I_Dont