Liquid Devil!
The Bible and the Bottle
By Dr. Hugh Pyle
Introduction:
"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise." Proverbs 20:1
"Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? 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 colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.
At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Proverbs 23:29-32"Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them!" Isaiah 5:11
"Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink:" Isaiah 5:22
"Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine!" Isaiah 28:1
"But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment." Isaiah 28:7
She was to have been a bridesmaid Saturday, a petite blonde of twenty. The man who pulled out a butcher knife and drove its eight-inch blade into her body three times had no explanation except that he had been drinking in neighborhood bars. The girl died and the man continued drinking in the saloons of Philadelphia until he was arrested in a bar at 2:00 a.m.
A lieutenant in the army paratroopers, a twenty-three-year-old graduate of Clemson University, did not like liquor. But he was forced to participate in a ritual of vodka drinking at a prop-blast that would help to determine his promotion. This young lieutenant at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, drowned in his own vomit after swilling seventeen ounces of vodka.
In Tennessee an enraged farmer came home from an all-night drinking bout and killed four people including his two small sons and his mother. He and his buddies were cut and bruised from a wild automobile ride while drunk.
These episodes from the front pages of recent newspapers are a sample of what is happening across America and round the world today!
Sometime ago down near Miami two cars met head on. In the bloody, gory remains of the wreckage a Bible was found in one car, but in the car that caused the tragedy there was a whiskey bottle. Thus the battles rages between the bottle and the Bible!
God says that "wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging"! What a contrast to God's promise, "No good thing will be withheld from them that walk uprightly" (Psalm 84:11).
God says, "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!" (Habakkuk 2:15). Here again the bottle can be contrasted with 1st Timothy 6:17 describing "the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy."
"No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God" (1st Corinthians 6:10), Paul thunders, as he denounces the bottle, but Jesus in the Bible says concerning His own sheep, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10)
The ads say drink it, the TV commercials say drink it, wicked worldly friends say drink it! What do you say?
One of the battles in Vietnam war was called the battle of "Heartbreak Hill." But there is a battle raging in modern society that causes far more heartache, sorrow and death than even the horrors of physical, bloody war. Indeed, America's battle with the bottle is Heartbreak Hill number one!
The world says drink it--but what does God say?
"Be not drunk with wine." Paul declares in Ephesians 5:18.
"Take heed to yourselves, lest any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that that day come upon you unawares" (Luke 21:34), Jesus said.
"Look not thou upon the wine" (Proverb 23:31), Solomon urges. Don't even look at it!
A monster is loose causing our nation to crumble at the foundation, our society to come apart at the seams, our homes to become seething caldrons of unrest and sorrow, and our highways to become slaughter pens! Liquid Devil!
There is absolutely no justification for it.
They say Christ made wine, but He certainly would not have made fermented wine. He made nothing rotten. Wine in the Bible when used in the right sense speaks of pure blood of the grape. The same Saviour who throughout the Bible urges people not to drink would certainly not create something to contradict His own word and to ruin the men He came to save! They say booze can be used as a good medicine, but reputable doctors do not recommend it even for that. They say it s necessary for economy, yet is has been proven true that the nation is spending millions more to mop up after the ruin and wreckage of booze than she gains by it in revenue!
The Devil comes as a "serpent" and "a dragon" (Revelation 12:9). He comes "as a roaring lion" (1st Peter 5:8). He comes as "an angel of light" (2nd Corinthians 11:14). He comes as an "oppressor" (Isaiah 51:13); as a deceiver (Revelation 12:9). He comes as a "beast--a man of sin"; but as never before in America, in the world, in our twentieth-first century, he comes in Liquid Form!
"LIQUID DEVIL." Whether beer, wine, or gin, vodka, rum or whiskey--you're a Liquid Devil!
No one with good sense would risk it.
Only "fools make a mock of sin" (Proverb 14:9). (All "Winesaps" do not grow on apple trees!)
Never has the Bible had as many illustrations from human life as in the case of the Liquid Devil! Every day the papers cry, the law courts prove, the brokenhearted, tragedy-stricken victims of drink scream, "Liquid Devil"!
Which will it be--the bottle or the Bible?
Neutral you cannot be. "The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish" (Psalm 1:6).To buy "Liquid Devil," click here!
God's Simple Plan of Salvation
The Truth About Booze- part 1 (Pastor Jeff Owens)
The Truth About Booze- part 2 (Pastor Jeff Owens
The Salvation of a Nation (by Pastor Jack Hyles)
Hear Billy Sunday's "Booze Kills!" (MP3)
Hear Billy Sunday on Prohibition (MP3)
