The Sunday Mail
MY sincere apologies to our valued readers for not bringing the usual interviews with men and women of God.
I was away attending our mother’s memorial service. Memorial services are topical issues with some churches performing them while others claim that they are pagan ceremonies.
Questions abound on what memorial services are. It is the same with tombstone unveiling. Are they biblical or syncretic platforms used to perform traditional rituals such as ancestral worship, with church services used as a cover?
Why do they also become an issue when they are held in rural areas? If they are biblical, what format should they take? Email your opinions to: [email protected] or [email protected].
However, I was able to get another controversial topic: drinking and alcohol. Bishop Albert Chikuni of Family Life Ministries International calls it “the devil’s drink”.
The king in Proverbs 31:6-7 is advised to: “Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more.”
Below is Bishop Chikuni’s contribution:
There is a drink, which is not a mere drink but a weapon against lives. It is the devil packaged in a container
and foolish people rush to buy that poison.
You think you are merely enjoying the liquid and yet there is concoction in it. You may wonder where I am getting this! Direct from the Holy Scriptures.
Proverbs 20:1 says, “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.”
Wine mocks (laughs at its victim in a scornful way).
Strong drink is raging (showing violent uncontrollable anger, or continuing with overpowering force).
So, there is deception in a solution. There is a strong demonic spirit, that’s why many are addicted to the drink.
The deception is in the drink. The Bible says the devil is a deceiver. So, the connection that the devil is a deceiver and there is deception in a drink cannot be underestimated.
Alcohol does not at all contribute to the behaviour that God expects of a man.
The Traffic Safety Board has a major campaign: “Don’t drink and drive.” The “don’t drink and drive” campaign is not referring to tea, water or fruit juice, but to strong drink.
The drink is called strong because it is strong enough to pull any one down.
“Don’t drink and drive”! Why? “Lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted.” (Proverbs 31:5)
What kind of drink is this that perverts your judgment? Judgment refers to your ability to make sound decisions. You make sound decisions by using your mind. So, your mind is the target, your mind is perverted, corrupted or distorted.
In other words, your state of thinking is affected. Your ability to choose what is right is highly compromised.
The senses you use to make right decisions are corrupted. Your ability to hear is corrupted. Your ability to see is affected. Your concentration is divided.
Thus, you are driving while you are being driven. In that state you become a dangerous driver to other motorists and obviously to the passengers you are carrying, yourself included.
The Bible describes the drunken state in Proverbs 23:29-35: “Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes?
Those who tarry long over wine; those who go to try mixed wine. Do not look at wine when it is red,
When it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. In the end it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart utter perverse things.
You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast. ‘They struck me,’ you will say, ‘but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake? I must have another drink.’” (Hang-over or “bhabharasi”).
From these scriptures you can conclude that the drunken state is a description of destruction. For example verse 33 says, “Thine eyes shall behold strange women . . . ”
Your sexual drive is directed towards strange women, and if you are a woman, your sexual drive is towards strange men and the result has always been HIV and Aids and other sexually transmitted infections.
There are religious people who like beer and they attempt to search scriptures that support beer drinking, through the wisdom of God.
Advice to them is in Isaiah 28:7: “But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.”
So, the prophets and priests have made errors through wine or strong drink. They err in vision, they stumble in judgment.
Prophets and priests serve in the house of the Lord but God never approved their behaviour after taking this drink.
It doesn’t matter how much you claim to go to church, and how you claim to know the Bible. Wine and beer will deceive you if you drink them. You can’t play with a poisonous snake without risking being poisoned.
Isaiah 5:11-12 also says, “Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them! . . . but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands.”
Anyone who drinks will never take God seriously. You will never consider the operation of His hands. You are His handiwork. You were made by God. So, drinking this forbidden drink is totally disregarding Him.
The reason for not drinking is to know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong.
We can’t know better than God.
If you are born again, you are a son in the King’s palace and obviously strong drink is not yours. More so, you are the tabernacle of God. God lives in you through His Spirit.
Some may say Timothy was instructed by Paul to take little wine to heal his stomach challenge. While others say Jesus changed water into wine at a wedding in Cana. But do these New Testament scriptures say you must drink alcohol?
