If February gives much snow, a fine summer it doth foreshow.” English Rhyme.
What has this year meant to you so far? We know that the Lord’s Second Coming is another year closer, and it behooves us to be ready for that glorious day!
“But what can be done to teach children and youth the evils of a practice of which parents, teachers, and ministers set them the example? Little boys, hardly emerged from babyhood, may be seen smoking their cigarettes. If one speaks to them about it, they say, ‘My father uses tobacco.’ They point to the minister or the Sunday-school superintendent and say, ‘Such a man smokes; what harm for me to do as he does?’ Many workers in the temperance cause are addicted to the use of tobacco. What power can such persons have to stay the progress of intemperance?
“I appeal to those who profess to believe and obey the Word of God: Can you, as Christians, indulge a habit that is paralyzing your intellect and robbing you of power rightly to estimate eternal realities? Can you consent daily to rob God of service which is His due, and to rob your fellow men, both of service you might render and of the power of example?
“Have you considered your responsibility as God’s stewards, for the means in your hands? How much of the Lord’s money do you spend on tobacco? Reckon up what you have thus spent during your lifetime. How does the amount consumed by this defiling lust compare with what you have given for the relief of the poor and the spread of the gospel?
“No human being needs tobacco, but multitudes are perishing for want of the means that by its use is worse than wasted. Have you not been misappropriating the Lord’s goods? Have you not been guilty of robbery toward God and your fellow men? Know ye not that ‘ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.’
“Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. Proverbs 20:1. Never was traced by human hand a more vivid picture of the debasement and the slavery of the victim of intoxicating drink. Enthralled, degraded, even when awakened to a sense of his misery, he has no power to break from the snare; he ‘will seek it yet again.’” Ministry of Healing, 329, 330.