the Oil and Wine

Two substances run through the whole Word of God. One anointed prophets, priests, and kings, and burns still in the lamps of His church. The other gladdened the feasts of Israel, was poured at the altar of the LORD - and has mocked, ruined, and buried men in every generation since Noah planted a vineyard.There is a passage in Deuteronomy that is almost never preached - a feast God Himself commanded, where the tithe silver bought wine, or strong drink, or whatsoever thy soul desireth, and a people learned the fear of the LORD at a table He appointed. And there is a wreckage every pastor has stood over: the homes emptied, the lives ruined, the mocker at work in every generation. This book refuses to surrender either truth.The Oil and the Wine weighs the whole record: the anointing oil of Exodus and the unction that abideth; every Hebrew and Greek word the Scriptures give the cup; the presses, cellars, and jars the ancient ground itself has yielded; and the full history of how the church's reading changed - names, dates, and documents, from the two-wine theory of the 1830s to the unfermented cup of 1869 and the dry amendment beyond. It softens nothing: not the feast God commanded, not the wreckage the mocker leaves, and not the high and holy ground of those who stand farthest away - the Nazarite's ground, freely offered, wholly unto the Lord.Read it with your Bible open. It asks nothing else.