9 responses so far ↓

• 1 Pilgrimsarbour // Sep 3, 2007 at 12:42 am

  This comment is not for posting:

  The nickname “johnMark” is one I started using onine in 2001.

  Fix this to say “online.” Sorry, I have issues.

• 2 Pilgrimsarbour // Sep 3, 2007 at 12:44 am

  OK, no choice about publishing comments. Now for the real comment. Thanks for blogging. I have read several of your posts and find the ones on the doctrines of grace and how they are received in the SBC to be especially interesting.

  Keep up the good work.

  God Bless,

  Pilgrimsarbour

• 3 deborah // Nov 24, 2007 at 8:12 pm

  Your testimony truly touched my heart, because I always wanted you to know the love and peace you can have as a true christian. I know that you had to find your own way, which I am thankful you did.
  My prayer is that you continue to live, grow and learn.
  As all of us should be doing.
  love, your mother

• 4 Mike Hardin // Nov 26, 2007 at 1:37 am

  “In the metro atlanta area” ?? Where?

  I don’t understand anonymous blogging. If it’s worth saying, it’s wroth claiming. BTW, all of your seems to be worth saying. Keep blogging, anonymous or not.

• 5 johnMark // Nov 26, 2007 at 7:44 am

  Mike,

  Yep, I’m in the metro Atlanta area in Marietta. I wasn’t really trying to be anonymous in the sense of hiding. I’ve just been using the nick “johnMark” for a long time and decided to start blogging with it.

  I’ll shoot you an email.

  Mark

• 6 Dawson Morrison // Jul 5, 2008 at 7:52 am

  Well John Mark,

  I do not like the cavalier way you approach the Bible and Christian issues.
  I am Dawson Morrison Pastor of Mountain Home Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
  People like you run around collecting up unholy dust and muses of the devil; you will find a host of friends as you continue down that path of relevance, but you will find no consolation from heavenly host.

  Here is an article I want to share with you on my feelings for alcohol. I will plainly state that Jesus NEVER drank fermented wine. I believe in total abstinence. I am certain the Bible teaches total abstinence.
  The crowds supporting casual or social drink do so because of their personal desire for alcohol and their interest in compromise.
  There are so many little wimp laymen, who have not been called by the Holy Spirit to shepherd churches, yet they are expert theologians.
  I have 42 years on the job as a SBC Pastor; it irks me when I cross the path of such pathetic and futile exercise.

  Please go study William Patton’s book, “Bible Wines”.

  OPEN LETTER ON ALCOHOL USE
  Compiled and written by: Dawson Morrison, Pastor
  Mountain Home Baptist Church

  “Reassert our truceless and uncompromising hostility to the manufacture, sale, importation and transportation of alcoholic beverages” SBC (1896).
  • It appears it does not take much alcohol to impact a person physiologically. Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle determined among test subjects that even one “strong drink” can cause a “substantial perceptual deficit.” This “inattentional blindness” in those whose blood alcohol level was less than half the legal limit resulted in these individuals being more likely not to notice an object that appeared unexpectedly in their line of sight (Reuters, “One strong drink can make you ‘blind drunk’,” July 4, 2006).

  While I believe abstinence has absolute biblical underpinning, sociological indicators persuade me that any use, social or other, is unwise.

  An adolescent’s view of alcohol is positively associated with his or her parents’ drinking behavior and attitudes, I suppose in much the same way a child’s view of prayer and personal Bible study is impacted by his or her parents’ behavior.

  A study done a few years ago found that in homes where the parents were total abstainers from alcohol, 16 percent of the teenagers in the home experimented with alcohol before adulthood. In homes were the parents were social drinkers, 66 percent of the children experimented with alcohol before adulthood.

  And a child who drinks before age 15 is four times more likely to develop alcohol dependence, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports. Furthermore, recent studies have shown the alarming extent to which alcohol decimates an adolescent’s still-developing brain and nervous system — far more harshly than it does those of an adult.

  In modern American society, the human toll taken by alcohol abuse is staggering. According to a recent USA Today/ 20 percent of Americans indicated they “had an immediate relative who at some point had been addicted to alcohol or drugs.” The article, “In Tim Ryan’s Family, He is the Addict,” in the July 20, 2006, issue of USA Today notes, “That translates into roughly 40 million American adults with a spouse, parent, sibling or child battling addiction.”

• 7 Dale // Jul 5, 2008 at 11:32 am

  You say “While I believe abstinence has absolute biblical underpinning, sociological indicators persuade me that any use, social or other, is unwise.” But then never actually show those “Biblical Underpinnings” Could it be because they are not there and you must resort to secular statistics?

  Simply put, it takes a twisting of scripture to come up with a total abstinence position.

• 8 ABClay // Jul 10, 2008 at 10:40 pm

  Brother Dawson,

  I find your comments regarding my friend Mark very troubling, especially since you have 42 years on the job as a SBC pastor.

  On another note, you said:

  “The crowds supporting casual or social drink do so because of their personal desire for alcohol and their interest in compromise.”

  You are just flat wrong here. I don’t drink alcohol because I don’t find it necessary to do so, not because I believe the bible teaches abstinence.

  Since we are recommending books, might I encourage you to read Gospel Centered Hermeneutics by Goldsworthy.

  Grace and peace to you…

  ABClay

• 9 M Burke // Sep 6, 2008 at 4:15 am

  Dawson Morrison wrote: “I will plainly state that Jesus NEVER drank fermented wine.”

  You sir are anathema. Look it up.

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