Clearly Scripture shows us that Jesus turned water into wine (fully alcoholic), celebrated the Passover meal which required alcoholic wine, drank wine at dinners/parties and was accused of 'drinking', used wine as a metaphor for His Spirit, and instituted a Communion meal with wine . . . all of which is to say that wine is not and can not be viewed as evil if the Lord Himself drank it and placed it in such an important role in the life of the Church.
Yet, here in America, many Pentecostals and Evangelicals teach that wine is evil and can not under any circumstance be consumed. There's no Scriptural basis for it other than fearing it might lead to drunkenness. A fear similar to pretty much any sin . . . sex, gluttony, etc. Banning all alcohol out of fear it'll lead to drunkenness is like banning all sex out of fear it'll lead to sex outside the bonds of marriage.
Many Pentecostals and Evangelicals see from Scripture that their alcohol ban is unfounded, but fall back on Romans 14:21 "It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall."
But Romans 14 starts off with "Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. 2 One persons faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them."
Thus those who ban drinking alcohol are weak in their faith and are requiring all those under them to enable that weakness rather than apply the full measure of this Scripture - allowing those who obey God through abstinence and those who obey and are free to drink as each being correct and not condemned. That's a mature faith. We can't keep coddling to the weak in faith. We need to teach them maturity.
