The Battle of The Bottle part 1 Adrian Rogers

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When I was growing up I admit there were times that I did not listen to my pastor’s sermon at church as attentively as I should have. However, there were times that he gave real life examples from the pulpit that caught my attention. One of those examples was the statistic that over 50% of deaths on the highway included a driver where alcohol was involved.

My pastor’s name was Adrian Rogers of Bellevue Baptist of Cordova, Tennessee and sadly one of Bellevue’s members, Billy Penn, was killed on Wednesday night September 26th by a drunk driver after leaving Wednesday night services.

My three sisters and I went to high school at Evangelical Christian School (ECS) in Cordova with Penn’s three children and my father had known Billy for forty years. Actually my father had left the same church parking lot on September 26th that Billy was in and Penn was killed just a mile away from the church.

At our family Sunday lunch on September 30, 2012, my father used the opportunity to discuss the dangers of alcohol with his grandchildren and that is exactly what I wanted to share today.

My father asked what is to come of 21-year-old Jordan Stonebrook who was the other driver? According to WMC-TV in Memphis Stonebrook slammed head on into Penn’s Buick Park Avenue around 9 p.m., Wednesday, September 26. Investigators say Stonebrook, who was driving a Chevy Tahoe was going the wrong way on Cordova Road.

Witnesses said Stonebrook apparently started driving the wrong way. For about half of a mile, other cars were dodging him going into the other lane and some even driving up on the curb.

Police said Stonebrook appeared intoxicated. Investigators said Stonebrook later said he started drinking a few hours earlier, downing seven shots of rum. Stonebrook was not seriously hurt in the crash.

WREG-TV reported that the Collierville man accused of drinking and driving just turned 21 -years-old last month.

Now, he’s charged with vehicular homicide.

“He’s got a life ahead of him and he’s got that burden on him for the rest of his days,” said Cordova resident Lisa Douba.  “He’ll never be able to forget that.”

Stonebrook faces up to 30 years in prison for this crime.

Right now, he is being held on a $100,000 bond.

Here are some of the details I remember from my pastor’s sermons on alcohol. Billy Sunday told a story that Adrian Rogers repeated for us:

I feel like an old fellow in Tennessee who made his living by catching rattlesnakes. He caught one with fourteen rattles and put it in a box with a glass top. One day when he was sawing wood his little five-year old boy,Jim, took the lid off and the rattler wriggled out and struck him in the cheek. He ran to his father and said, “The rattler has bit me.” The father ran and chopped the rattler to pieces, and with his jackknife he cut a chunk from the boy’s cheek and then sucked and sucked at the wound to draw out the poison. He looked at little Jim, watched the pupils of his eyes dilate and watched him swell to three times his normal size, watched his lips become parched and cracked, and eyes roll, and little Jim gasped and died.

The father took him in his arms, carried him over by the side of the rattler, got on his knees and said, “God, I would not give little Jim for all the rattlers that ever crawled over the Blue Ridge mountains.”

That is the question that must be answered by everyone no matter what their religious beliefs. Is the pleasure of drinking alcohol worth the life of one of your children?

Here is a scripture that describes what will happen to a person under the influence of alcohol:

Proverbs 23:29-32
(29) Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?
(30) They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.
(31) Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.
(32) At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.

Jordan Stonebrook told the policemen on the scene that he was fed up and decided to get drunk. The results were much the same as the scripture indicated.

There have been several high-profile deaths recently where alcohol was involved. Ryan Dunn was a reality tv star and his untimely death on June 20, 2011 was also caused by drunk driving. Dunn actually tweeted a picture of himself drinking just moments before he left the bar and crashed his car killing everyone in his car.

The Huffington Post reported on October 26, 2011, “Amy Winehouse drank herself to death. That was the ruling of a coroner’s inquest into the death of the Grammy-winning soul singer, who died with empty vodka bottles in her room and lethal amounts of alcohol in her blood – more than five times the British drunk driving limit.”

I didn’t know it was possible to drink yourself to death in one day, but I discovered that also AC/DC’s lead singer Bon Scott also drank himself to death back on February 19, 1980.

Those are several cases of famous people dying because of alcohol use, but it touches almost every family at some point. If sharing this with the readers of the Saline Courier would help even one person to avoid this same fate then it has been well worth writing this article.

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Everette Hatcher is a regular contributor to The Saline Courier. He is the fourth generation in his family to work in the broom manufacturing business. Everette and his wife Jill have four children and live in Alexander.

Ryan Dunn and his friends moments before they died.

Flickr user Eric Lewis posted the image below with a caption that says the photo shows what’s left of Dunn’s car.

@TheSun_Showbiz

Singer Amy Winehouse

The Battle of The Bottle part 4 Adrian Rogers