Ministers Blogs
“Danger of Alcohol”
If one of your friends is trying to convince you, or if you are trying to convince yourself that alcohol or even social drinking is not dangerous, read what the Bible says about this menace to life:
· Rom 14:21, “It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.”
· Pr. 20:1 “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.”
· Pr. 21:17 “Whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man; he who loves wine and oil will not be rich.”
· Pr. 23:20-21, “Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags.”
· Pr. 23:29-35, uses sarcasm to show the harmfulness of alcohol.
· Pr. 31:4-7, “It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted. Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more.”
· Isaiah warns against strong drink and harshly condemns those who use it in Isaiah 5:11-16; 22.
· Then the Rechabites are example for every Christian to abstain from all alcohol in Jeremiah 35.
Then if this list is not enough Pro. 1:20 reminds us that, “wisdom cries aloud in the street…” Notice the wisdom that these people share about alcohol even though many were not Christians.
· Shakespeare: “Alcohol is a poison men take into the mouth to steal away the brain.”
· Gladstone: “Drink is more destructive than way, pestilence and famine.”
· Manning: “It is a public, permanent agency of degradation.”
· Lincoln: “Drinking is a cancer in human society, eating out its vitals and threatening its destruction.”
· Robert Hall: “It is distilled damnation.”
· Lord Chesterfield called it “An artist in human slaughter.”
· General Pershing: “Drunkenness has killed more men than all of history’s wars.”
· General Robert E. Lee: “My experience through life has convinced me that abstinence from spirituous liquors is the best safe guard to morals and health.”
· President Taft: “He who drinks is deliberately disqualifying himself for advancement.”
· President Theo. Roosevelt: “—business tends to lawlessness on the part of those who conduct it and to criminality on the part of those who patronize it.”
· President Wm. McKinley: “the most ruinous and degrading of all human pursuits.”
Then there is more “wisdom from the streets”:
· 55% of all auto accidents are alcohol-related.
· 125,000 people were killed in alcohol-related auto accidents in one 5-year span (that is more deaths than we suffered in Korea and Vietnam combined).
· There are 100,000,000 drinkers in the United States and 9,000,000 of them are alcoholics.
· 57% of boys and 43% of girls ages 15 to 20 are drinkers.
· 62% of all major crimes are committed by those under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crime.
In view of such information, it would seem that Christ-like people should avoid the use of alcoholic beverages in any amount! Clear Bible teaching and the “wisdom from the streets” shows us that alcohol is inconsistent with the Christian lifestyle. Think about it! Mark T. Tonkery
