For more than 1800 years wine was used in all Christian churches when the Lord's Supper was celebrated. There was no other option because Dr. Welch did not apply Louis Pasteur discovery, which inhibited fermentation, to grape juice until after the mid 1800's. Before that time ALL communion wine was really wine, and not grape juice.
Of course wine was a part biblical worship long before it was used by Jesus and His disciples at the Last Supper. The Last Supper was initiated by Jesus while He and His disciples celebrated the Passover. I have read the VERY silly arguments made by some people that Jesus used grape juice at the Last Supper/ Passover. These people clearly don't know much about fermentation. If they did, they would know that it would not be possible for Jesus and His disciples to have drank grape juice without a miracle, and there is no such miracle mentioned in the Bible.
Grapes ripen in late summer and fall. The juice is extracted shortly after harvesting. As soon as the wine skin is broken, yeast, which occurs naturally in nature and is on wine skins, will immediately begin to turn the sugars contained in the juice to alcohol. Yeast works quickly and in less than two weeks all the sugar is gone and is replaced by alcohol and CO2.
Passover is observed in the spring, so all the grape juice processed in the harvest closest to the Last Supper become wine long before Passover arrived. Therefore, Jesus and His disciples either drank wine at the Last Supper, or Jesus preformed a miracle, that we have not been told about.
If my teetotaling, Evangelical brethren are correct, and we are not to drink wine, especially in worship, then prior to Dr. Welch's discovery, you would only have been be able to observe the Lord's Supper in late summer or fall, and you would have to live very close to a vineyard. Like I said above, the whole idea is silly and people who make such claims are (at this point) making ridicules claims.
Wine is used in worship in both the Old and New Covenants. One has to do some serious exegetical contortions and twist a lot of Scripture to say otherwise.
I hope to say more on that subject in the future.
Coram Deo,
Kenith
