The Tragedy In America
"Tell 'em, drink did it!!" so said young, boyish Harold Roberts with shaking hands, tear-filled eyes and trembling lips as yesterday afternoon I sat and talked with this cruel killer for nearly an hour.
"Just five weeks previously the 25 year-old husband and father had viciously, wickedly, heartlessly, inhumanly stomped his own 17 month-old baby boy to death with his feet. The baby had been horribly beaten, battered and disfigured. When I talked with this killer of his own flesh and blood he was thin, haggard and nervous. Five weeks before, when imprisoned, he was strong, healthy and husky! Those who knew him insisted that he was not the same man in physical appearance.
"Why had he done it? How had it happened? What was there about the insanity of sin to bring a once happy and proud father so low? Weep as you read the answer: HE AND HIS WIFE WERE BOTH BEASTLY DRUNK!" ("The Blight of Booze" — page 3.)
This is a story that has been oft repeated through the years in America, land of the free, home of the brave, and place to buy cheap booze! Death on the highways, broken homes, orphaned children, murder, beatings, stabbings, moral slavery; all this and more are the fruits of the Liquor industry, and a tragedy in America!
Lately, much effort is being put forth by the American Cancer Society and other organizations to stop people from smoking cigarettes, and I wish that every one would stop fouling up the air we breathe with tobacco! But, at least when one is smoking cigarettes, he is only killing himself. When he gets slop drunk on booze he is liable to kill others! Such a menace to life should be removed from the land. We all realize that it is not really possible to legislate morality, yet it would be such a great improvement to mankind in general if booze was neither advertised nor sold for human consumption! I am all for taking tobacco advertising off TV, and how about removing all advertising for alcoholic beverages at the same time! But it is probably true that the liquor industry is powerful enough to block such a move! Pity the poor tobacco people who may not be strong enough to stop removal of their ads from TV!
The use of alcoholic beverages is a moral and spiritual shame in our country.
Certainly they have no place in the life of a Christian! The Christian has no business making, buying, selling or using the rotten stuff! Christians are to engage in honorable enterprises, "good works" Titus 2:14. Is the manufacture of alcoholic beverages, or their distribution or sale a "good work??" Absolutely not!! The "fruits" of the liquor industry shows that it is very, very bad.
It is recorded in Habakkuk 2:15, 16, "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and maketh him drunken. . . the cup of the Lord's right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory." It is just as wrong for a child of God in this Christian dispensation to engage in these things as it was for a child of God in the Mosaical dispensation. Perhaps, more so, since we have a "better covenant" with "better promises." Hebrews 8:6.
Spiritual And Moral Wrecks
The writer in Proverbs 23:29-33 points out how strong drink will make a person a moral and spiritual wreck. "Who hath woe? who hath sorrows? who hath contentions? who hath babblings? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again."
SORROW — sorrow enters many a home by way of the bottle. Alcoholism is often a cause for divorce, child abuse, poverty, broken health, etc. Someone has said, "If you want plenty of poverty, plenty of pain, plenty of sorrow, plenty of shame, plenty of broken heads and hearts, hopes doomed and sealed — be a drunkard!"
STUPIDITY — Like the red-eyed drunk who thinks he can lick anybody or do anything ("... as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea...") and remembers not how nor where he has received his wounds or been beaten; the first thing he does upon sobering up is to look for another bottle. "I will seek it yet again." Drinking results in stupidity! Beverage alcohol goes directly to the mind via the blood stream and makes a man STUPID! Such accounts for the auto accidents caused by drunken drivers!
MORAL LOOSENESS — Prov. 23:33 "Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart utter perverse things." A man under liquors influence wants not his own, but another man's wife. A drunken man will commit adultery or rape, or indulge in other immoral acts without regard for the consequences! The woman in the bar, after several drinks, no longer cares if her clothes are buttoned up, or if her skirt covers her legs. Her brain can no longer function properly while it is being pickled in booze! And so drunkenness contributes greatly to the moral decline in our nation. Sexual immorality comes free with every bottle! A tragic bonus for those that drink!
If you tamper with the sin of liquor, you put yourself in moral and spiritual slavery! We need to emphasize that alcoholism is a SIN! The liquor industry promoters want us to refer to it as a "social disease." It may be a disease, but it is a SELF-INFLICTED disease. Therefore, it is a sin! "And be not drunken with wine. . . ." Eph. 5:18. In the fifth chapter of the Galatian letter Paul catalogs the "works of the flesh." Among these are drunkenness. The Apostle points out that ". . . they who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Gal. 5:21b. The use of intoxicating beverages is a SIN! There is no way to make it sound any nicer. Sin must be repented of; one must stop his sinning in order to please God. The drunkard must quit drinking, finally, completely, irrevocably. The writer in Proverbs paints a sorry picture of the man who is addicted to alcoholic beverages. E. C. Wolf in Beacon Bible Commentary comments thus: "If the use of the lighter wines of low alcohol content in the day of a primitive culture produced such miseries, who can estimate the tragic consequences of the use of distilled alcoholic beverages of high alcohol content in a society throbbing with the tensions of a complex culture and racing with the speed of the jet age?" The warnings given by the inspired writer in Proverbs should speak very clearly and forcibly to us today. Stay away from booze! Woe to the foolish family who stock their refrigerators with beer in plain sight of their children. They had just as well let the kiddies play with black widow spiders or loaded revolvers!! All alcoholic beverages contain ETHYL ALCOHOL, "which is a habit-forming, narcotic drug, poison and harmful to every form of life," but in addition to that, BEER also contains LUPULIN! What is Lupulin? "It is the active narcotic principle found in the hops which are used in the brewing of beer — It is distinctively a hypnotic type narcotic."
Certainly the Scripture speaks plainly enough on this subject. Christians after the New Testament order cannot make, sell, distribute, buy, or use alcoholic beverages and be pleasing to God. The use of alcoholic beverages will destroy your life and physical health while living here upon earth, and will cause you to be lost eternally in a devil's hell!! Foolish indeed is the man or woman, boy or girl, who uses alcoholic beverages!
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