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Abstain From Fleshy Lusts
75
in the worship of God. Divine grace seems powerless to enliven
or spiritualize their prayers or their testimonies. These professed
Christians should consider the source of their enjoyment. Is it from
above, or from beneath?—
The Sanctified Life, 25
.
Advanced Age of Some Users No Argument
—Those who use
tea, coffee, opium, and alcohol, may sometimes live to old age, but
this fact is no argument in favor of the use of these stimulants. What
these persons might have accomplished, but failed to do because of
their intemperate habits, the great day of God alone will reveal.—
Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 35
.
Not All Tempted Alike
—Some look with horror upon men who
have been overcome with liquor, and are seen reeling and staggering
in the street, while at the same time they are gratifying their appetite
for things differing in their nature from spirituous liquor, but which
injure the health, affect the brain, and destroy their high sense of
spiritual things. The liquor drinker has an appetite for strong drink
which he gratifies, while another has no appetite for intoxicating
drinks to restrain, but he desires some other hurtful indulgence, and
does not practice self-denial any more than the drunkard.—
Spiritual
Gifts 4a:125
.
[75]
Satan’s Counterfeit of the Tree of Life
—From beginning to
end, the crime of tobacco using, of opium and drug medication,
has its origin in perverted knowledge. It is through plucking and
eating of poisonous fruit, through the intricacies of names that the
common people do not understand, that thousands and ten thousands
of lives are lost. This great knowledge, supposed by men to be so
wonderful, God did not mean that man should have. They are using
the poisonous productions that Satan himself has planted to take
the place of the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the
nations. Men are dealing in liquors and narcotics that are destroying
the human family.—
Manuscript 119, 1898
.