Wine

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.  1Timothy 5:23

As you can imagine, in Paul’s time as now, not all water was safe to drink. Consequently, when safe water was hard to find, other ways of quenching thirst were recommended to avoid such things as dysentery ailments.

Many have tried to twist this verse around to where Paul is telling Timothy to use fermented wine. They forget that regular grape juice was also called “wine” in the Scriptures as well. Teaching that it is okay to drink fermented grape juice, or what we would call wine today, goes directly against the rest of the Scriptures. (See Proverbs 20:1; Proverbs 23:29-32)

 Apparently Timothy was frequently ill and was not good advertisement for the gospel. Paul is simply telling Timothy he needs to be physically fit by drinking good grape juice when good drinking water is unavailable.