When It's Too Late

“Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise ... Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.” —Proverb 20:1,17

In the early morning hours of September 19th,1999 - 20 year old Jacqueline Saburido (pictured left and right) and four of her friends were returning home from a birthday party.

Driving the other car, 18 year old high school student Reggie Stephey, had been drinking beer with some buddies.

On a dark road on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, Stephey's SUV veered into the Oldsmobile carrying Jacqui and her friends.

Within minutes, the car caught fire. Jacqui was pinned in the front seat on the passenger side. She was burned over 60% of her body; no one thought she could survive. Her hands were so badly burned that all of her fingers had to be amputated.

She lost her hair, her ears, her nose, her left eyelid and much of her vision. She has had more than 50 operations since the crash and has many more to go. How tragic! How unnecessary! Jacqui was the victim of a drunk driver. There is not a substance any more deceitful and dangerous than alcohol.

On May 20, 2011 Saburido again appeared on the 4th to last episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show, a show dedicated to Oprah's Favorite Guests. During the segment Saburido revealed that as of the taping of that show, she had undergone over 120 surgeries. The beer companies will never tell you that!

There is much debate over what is sinful and what is not. The issue with drinking alcohol is not so much over whether it is a sin as to whether it is a smart thing to do. Someone recently asked me if it is a sin to drink alcohol. That's like asking if it is a sin to drive with your eyes closed. No, it's not a sin, but it's stupid thing to do. Is it a sin to drink bleach? Smoke cigarettes? Eat junk food? At what point does deliberately harming one's body (or risking hurting someone else) become a sin? A lot of people set the line of what is sinful and what is not at many different points.

You ask me, “Is it a sin to drink beer?” Let me ask you friend... Is it a sin to attempt to beat the train across the pedestrian crossing? Is it a sin to play Russian Roulette with a loaded gun? Is it a sin to sniff spray-paint up your nose? Is it a sin to stick your head into a burning oven? Is it a sin to work underneath your car without a safety jack stand? Is it a sin to jump in front of oncoming traffic? Is it a sin to play golf on a hill during a lightning storm? I mean, it's a stupid and loaded question. Drinking beer is a game of Russian Roulette. You've got 5 empty chambers and the 6th is loaded with a bullet.

We know certainly that drunkenness is a sin (1st Corinthians 6:9-10). We know certainly that trying to get one's neighbor drunk to see their nakedness, take advantage of them, or harm them in any way is a sin (Habakkuk 2:15). In the Old Testament, you would have had to drink a gallon of wine to get drunk because it was naturally fermented and weak. This is why Proverb 23:30 says woe unto them who “tarry long at the wine.” You had to drink wine for a long time to get drunk. This is quite different than today where drinking just 2 beers makes a person intoxicated and impaired too much to drive safely. Beer today is made in a factory and is what the Old Testament terms “strong drink.” The Bible warns about the highly deceptive nature of alcohol. Proverb 20:1, “Wine is a mocker, STRONG DRINK is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.” The word “deceived” here means “to reel in.” You are being reeled in like a fish about to be caught and filleted. The Bible calls those who drink beer “fools,” because it is strong drink.

I watched a mechanic run a knife through his hand, cutting his thumb half off because he'd been drinking. Do you think he wanted to do that? No, of course not. When I was a kid, I watched a drunk man down the street beat his wife, break all the windows in front of his house, and end up arrested. Do you think that's how he intended to spend the 4th of July? No, of course not. I stood over the bodies of a mama and her dead baby being lowered into their graves, both killed by a drunk driver. Do you think that driver meant to kill anybody? No, of course not. Nobody gets up and says, “Today is a great day, I think I'll get drunk and kill somebody or ruin my life today.” But it happens every single day, multiple times over in the United States, again and again. Alcohol is deceptive by nature. This is what Proverb 20:1 teaches. If you defend your booze drinking, you'd better take heed my friend, for one day you may eat your words... Proverb 20:17, “Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.”

People these days only consider Rum or Jack Daniel's whiskey as “strong drink,” but Biblically even your weakest beers today would be considered strong drink because of their intoxicating nature. That's why people drink beer in the first place, i.e., to get buzzed and drunk. People don't drink beer only because it tastes good. You're a liar if you say otherwise. You like that buzzed feeling, forgetting your troubles, and on occasion getting drunk. With everything in life comes responsibility. I think drinking any amount of alcohol just for recreation is an act of irresponsibility, which to me would make it a sin.

The beer companies who market alcohol take no responsibility for the millions of lives they hurt, destroy, and damage. America's partying culture of wild times, booze, and fornication are of the Devil. Anywhere you find immoral sex you'll find booze, and vise versa. Anywhere you find casino gambling you'll find booze. SIN CITY is all about the booze!!!

Millions of underaged teens are alcohol drinkers. They are trying to emulate their favorite Country singers like Billy Currington and Toby Keith who glorify getting drunk in their music. The booze cartel and their lawyers are a bunch of rotten, greedy, evil thugs. All they care about is making money. God will require the blood of the innocent at their hands for mass-marketing a known menace to society. It would be no different than mass-marketing cocaine or heroine. I believe in freedom; but not the freedom to exploit and take advantage of people. Beer companies exploit society. It is tragic that beer is sold at sporting events. No wonder kids want to be like dad and uncle Joe and get drunk.

Alcohol is a narcotic, just like opiate-based pain killers such as Vicodin or Percocet. Drinking alcohol for recreation is no different than popping prescription pills for fun, just to enjoy one's self. There's umpteen forums and blogs online about people who pop handfuls of Klonopin, Dilaudid, Zoloft, Percocet, Oxycontin, and a host of other prescription drugs with alcohol just to get buzzed and high. This is drug abuse, which is exactly what drinking alcohol is. Alcohol should be outlawed as a Madison Avenue product. I don't think the government has any business telling people what they can grow or consume on their own property. I think marijuana never should have been outlawed. I think it has legitimate medical uses. But I don't think it should be marketed like booze. These are medicines and ought to be treated as such, not passed around at parties to enjoy for fun.

Charles Spurgeon, London's mightiest Baptist preacher, smoked cigars. So I am careful to say what it or is not a sin. I used to say that smoking is a sin. I'm not so sure about that. I like to burn leaves and smell the smoke. Technically I'm smoking. I think we need to be careful about labeling things as a sin that God doesn't. I've heard preachers say that it's sin not to be in Church 3 times week. You can't show me that from the Bible. Moody had church services 7-days a week, multiple times a day because there were so many people who wanted to hear what he had to preach. So do you have to be in Church 21-times a week? Let's be careful about calling something a sin unless the Bible says so. We know that we ought not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as believers (Hebrews 10:25); but that can be interpreted in many different ways. Having said that, I won't say that it's a sin to drink a beer; but the greater issue is, why would any believer want to drink such a dangerous and predictably unpredictable substance that has caused so much heartache and ruin?

We do know that drunkenness is a sin (1st Corinthians 6:9-10). That is a Biblical fact. Of course, this naturally raises the issue of what level of alcohol intoxication is considered “drunk?” The government defines legally drunk as .08 BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration). I would totally disagree with that figure. I say that any impairment from alcohol which causes a person to act irresponsibly or pose a risk to others while driving or working is DRUNK. That lowers it to about .01 BAC. Since we really don't know what DRUNK is, and the Bible doesn't exactly define it in terms of BAC, I think alcohol is something best left to the idiots. I mean, who needs to drink beer anyway? There are so many great beverages. Beer is for fools.

I think booze should not be mass-produced and sold in every store. That's the problem with alcohol, it has become a recreational drug in America, a way of life, part of our decadent and sinful culture of reckless immorality. Americans have proven themselves totally irresponsible with alcohol and it should cease from being marketed. Freedom is one thing; but corporate greed that exploits and takes advantage of societies is another entirely. You can drive down any major city in America and see knocked down light poles and side-swiped cars where all the drunk-drivers crashed into stuff during the night. I know because I lived in Chicago most of my life.

I visited Hawaiian and they sell hard-liquor right at the front counter in their ABC Stores. Booze, booze, and more booze! The island cultures are booze cultures! It's all government welfare and booze. It's really sad. Alaska's families have been devastated because of booze. Anchorage is in shambles because of the alcohol problems there. Families are suffering. The booze cartel doesn't care. They think just because they slap some “drink responsibly” fine print on their commercial adds that they've done their part and aren't to blame; but they are, my how they are. I'd work in a stinking sewer before I'd drive a beer truck. It's liquid Devil.

I hate to say it, but it's true. Alcohol is just one of those things that you can't talk any sense into a person's head until it's their child pinned underneath a 5,000 lb vehicle and some fool-headed drunk comes stumbling out of the car. While your child is dying, blood splattered everywhere, and you see your mangled loved one's body under the car; some idiot is laughing silly, so drunk that they don't even know how to reverse the car or what they've done. One man took a kitchen knife and cut his own son's head off and didn't even realize what he had done (MP3 sermon). The next day in jail he refused to believe what alcohol had caused him to do. There are thousands of accounts of people who drank booze for 20-years and never had a problem; but it just took that ONE TIME. Milk won't do that to you. 7-UP won't do that to you. A MacDonald's Coke won't cause you to go kill your loved ones. BEER WILL!!! Beer will wait 30-years if it needs to, but it will hurt you one day.

The Bible teaches The Golden Rule in Matthew 7:12, which is, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Would you want someone who's had a few beers driving toward your loved ones?

The problems with alcohol are numerous; but one of the biggest issues is the deceitful nature and the overpowering nature of this substance. It doesn't take much to get reeled in too far. One day too long, one drink too many, one drive too sudden... it's over. END