Strong drink is indeed "the great destroyer." Evangeline Booth was right when she declared: "Drink has shed more blood, hung more crepe, sold more homes, plunged more people into bankruptcy, armed more villains, slain more children, snapped more wedding rings, defiled more innocent, blinded more eyes, dethroned more reason, wrecked more manhood, dishonored more womanhood, broke more hearts, blasted more lives, driven more to suicide, and dug more graves than any other scourge that has cursed the world." Beverage alcohol destroys internally, externally and eternally. There are many "woes" connected with alcoholic beverages. Please consider the following:
1. The woe of physical consequences. A disturbed stomach, a diseased liver, a weakened heart, a feverish brain, and early grave (Isaiah 5:22; Proverbs 23:29- 35).
2. The woe of a deranged mind. Drunkenness beclouds reason, impairs memory, inflates imagination. While under the influence of an intoxicant, a man is insane. He errs in vision and stumbles in judgment.
3. The woe of financial disaster (Proverbs 23:21). Whiskey incapacitates man, unfits him for usefulness. Because of intemperance or drunkenness, men lose their jobs. For this reason drunkenness brings the man and his family rags and crumbs.
4. The woe of social ostracism. The drunkard is considered, and rightly so, an enemy of society.
5. The woe of moral calamity. Intoxicants arouse dormant passions. The sin of drunkenness is often followed by other sins. One of these is sexual sin. Another is falsehood. While under the influence of liquor, man's word in unreliable. Another sin is wrath. A drunkard will fight his best friend.
6. Finally, the woe of God's judgment. The Almighty has spoken His displeasure and pronounced His judgment. No drunkard can inherit the kingdom of heaven (I Corinthians 6:9, 10). This item originally appeared in Chapman Challenger ( October 11, 2000)
