WINE or GRAPE JUICE, C. H. Cayce No well informed person would say that grape juice was used in the old Jewish Passover supper. Several different articles were used in that supper, among them being wine and unleavened bread.
They also had in that supper what we now call gravy, and what was then called sop. See John 13:26. In eating this they dipped into the dish. See Matt. 26:23. Although there were a number of different articles in the Jewish Passover supper, yet the bread and wine were the substance of that supper. In the institution of the sacramental supper the Saviour took the substance (the bread and wine) from the Passover supper, and used that substance in the same. The orthodox Jew would not give a farthing for the Passover supper without the bread and wine, because that was the real substance of it.
Any man who knows anything at all about the meaning of words knows that wine is the fermented juice, and not the unfermented. Unfermented grape juice is not wine. Hence, for any man to say that the Saviour did not use wine is to say that the Bible lies about it. But the Bible does not lie. Hence, the man who says the Saviour did not use wine misrepresents the matter, either ignorantly or otherwise.
The Corinthians used fermented juice, or wine, in the supper. They abused the supper, and made it a drunken feast. See 1 Cor. 11:21. In partaking of the Lord’s supper some of them drank to excess and were drunken. The apostle rebuked them sharply for this, but he did not reprove nor rebuke them for using the wine in the supper. He approved the use of wine in the sacramental supper, but he did not approve drunkenness, or drinking to excess, or making a drunken feast of the Lord’s supper. Wine, then, is the proper thing to use in that supper.
Again: If we substitute grape juice, or anything else, for the wine in the sacramental supper, we say by this that the Lord of glory did not know what was best to use. This would [pg 273] be no less than presumption, and we know that some men are very presumptuous.
Again: If we have the right to substitute grape juice for wine in the sacramental supper, we have the same right to substitute water, or anything else. We have as much right to substitute buttermilk for the wine as we do to substitute grape juice. We could more consistently substitute gravy for the wine than we could grape juice, because gravy was used in the Passover supper and grape juice was not.
The Primitive Baptist, September 15, 1914.