The ill effects of alcoholism on people's lives, families and society have once again been brought to light following megachurch Pastor Perry Noble's fall from the pulpit over his alcohol addiction problem.
As such, an alcohol position paper released by the Assemblies of God General Presbytery more than 30 years ago is back in the public spotlight as AG General Superintendent George O. Wood reaffirmed his group's embrace of abstinence, according to Charisma News.
"We've seen the devastation alcohol can bring on individual lives and families," Wood said. "We knew our position of abstinence needed to be strengthened and reaffirmed."
In 1985, the AG General Presbytery came up with an alcohol position paper which cited the biblical precedence for abstinence.
"For two reasons we urge all believers to avoid the Satanic tool of alcohol which destroys lives, damns souls, and blights society," the paper states.
The two reasons cited are:
● "A studied review of the Scriptures affirms a stern warning against intoxicating drink and a call to separation from this evil for the purpose of better service to God and mankind."
● "Current social abuses and the public outrage over the high cost of alcohol in terms of human misery, death, and destruction of property cry out with urgency for the church of Jesus Christ to oppose firmly any use whatsoever of a beverage which so insidiously afflicts and binds the bodies and minds of men and women."
The AG position paper further said that believers who advocate or condone "drinking in moderation" provide Satan with an opening that he would not have in people who are committed to total abstinence.
The paper said by medical definition, alcohol is a drug. As such, a person who excuses himself by saying he is just moderate drinker is naive if he does not recognise the danger of eventually becoming addicted to alcohol.
It pointed out that no person intended to become an alcoholic when he took the first drink. Moreover, no person who persistently refused to take the first drink ever became an alcoholic.
The paper called on the church to take a bold stand against this evil that in the end "bites like a serpent, and stings like a viper" (Prov. 23:32, MEV).
The Assemblies of God, officially the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, is a group of over 150 autonomous but loosely associated national groupings of churches which together form the world's largest Pentecostal denomination. It is the fourth largest international Christian group of denominations and the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world.
