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Proverbs 31:4 “It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink,”BUT WASHINGTON’S STATE DEPT RUNS UP TAB OF $180,000 FOR MONTH OF SEPTEMBER!!!
The Sayings of King Lemuel
31 The sayings of King Lemuel contain this message,[a] which his mother taught him.
2 O my son, O son of my womb,
O son of my vows,
3 do not waste your strength on women,
on those who ruin kings.
4 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, to guzzle wine.
Rulers should not crave alcohol.
5 For if they drink, they may forget the law
and not give justice to the oppressed.
6 Alcohol is for the dying,
and wine for those in bitter distress.
7 Let them drink to forget their poverty
and remember their troubles no more.
8 Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves;
ensure justice for those being crushed.
9 Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless,
and see that they get justice.
A Wife of Noble Character
10 [b]Who can find a virtuous and capable wife?
She is more precious than rubies.
11 Her husband can trust her,
and she will greatly enrich his life.
12 She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life.
13 She finds wool and flax
and busily spins it.
14 She is like a merchant’s ship,
bringing her food from afar.
15 She gets up before dawn to prepare breakfast for her household
and plan the day’s work for her servant girls.
16 She goes to inspect a field and buys it;
with her earnings she plants a vineyard.
17 She is energetic and strong,
a hard worker.
18 She makes sure her dealings are profitable;
her lamp burns late into the night.
19 Her hands are busy spinning thread,
her fingers twisting fiber.
20 She extends a helping hand to the poor
and opens her arms to the needy.
21 She has no fear of winter for her household,
for everyone has warm[c] clothes.
22 She makes her own bedspreads.
She dresses in fine linen and purple gowns.
23 Her husband is well known at the city gates,
where he sits with the other civic leaders.
24 She makes belted linen garments
and sashes to sell to the merchants.
25 She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future.
26 When she speaks, her words are wise,
and she gives instructions with kindness.
27 She carefully watches everything in her household
and suffers nothing from laziness.
28 Her children stand and bless her.
Her husband praises her:
29 “There are many virtuous and capable women in the world,
but you surpass them all!”
30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last;
but a woman who fears the Lord will be greatly praised.
31 Reward her for all she has done.
Let her deeds publicly declare her praise.
December 9, 2013 at 11:55 am
On the eve of the government shutdown, the State Department was consumed with a very different budget crisis of its own: purchasing vast amounts of booze for American embassies around the globe.
According to Jim McElhatton of The Washington Times, the embassy in Moscow splurged on $15,900 in bourbon and whiskey; the Tokyo embassy, partial to wine, placed an order for $22,416. The embassy in Rio de Janeiro spent $5,625 on gratuity wine on September 29 and, on the day of the shutdown, opted for stronger gratuity whisky at $5,925.
The booze buying binge ran up a tab of $180,000 for the month of September. Alcohol is a fixture at diplomatic functions, and it is appropriate to have a stock on hand, but the State Department’s booze budget has ballooned since 2009—tripling in cost during President Obama’s tenure.
The Washington Times reported that the annual budget for 2008 was $118,000 and jumped to nearly $300,000 in 2011. It peaked at $415,000 in 2012, with the total for 2013 coming in at $400,000.
All this liquor and wine requires proper drinkware, of course. Thus, the State Department raced to fill an order of $5 million just hours before the shutdown, buying 12,000 pieces of hand-blown crystal glassware—retailing up to $85 per glass.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D–VT), the chairman of the subcommittee that exercises oversight on the State Department’s funding, said of the purchase that “it is wonderful to have such an exquisite example of Vermont craftsmanship on display and in use in our embassies around the world.”
The State Department fully embraced the spirit of “use it or lose it” season in Washington when it awarded a contract to American Sean Scully to install a $1 million granite statue at the London embassy. The British are not impressed, with the Daily Mail suggesting that Scully’s work “resembles stacked piles of paving stones.”
The mission of the State Department, as defined on the agency’s website, is to “[c]reate a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community.” It is hard to see how the recent spending surge is critical to that mission. Americans have traditionally valued thriftiness—a practice that is much in need of revival considering our budgetary woes. Considering the above expenditures, a good place for Congress to start might be the State Department.
Matthew Sabas is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please click here.
The Battle of The Bottle part 1 Adrian Rogers
Uploaded by SovaSergey on Jun 23, 2011
The famous preacher Adrian Rogers gives a phenomenal message about alcohol. One of my favorite sermons of all time.
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. Here is a story Adrian Rogers used in his sermon on alcohol:
Billy Sunday told of the man over here in the Blue Ridge Mountains who caught rattlesnakes for a living. One day, he caught a huge rattler, a rattlesnake that had 14 rattlers. He put it in a box, and put a glass top on the box, was out in the fields plowing, when his little boy slid the top off of that box where that rattler was coiled. And that rattlesnake sprung out of that box and planted his fangs in the cheek of that little boy. The little boy ran out of the house into the yard to tell his father what had happened. The father came in, saw that snake, and hewed it to pieces. Then, he took his pocket knife and cut a big chunk out of that little boy’s cheek—that’s all he knew to do—and put his mouth up there to try to suck the poison out of the face of that little boy. He watched that little boy’s face begin to swell and swell. It looked like several times its normal size, and the little boy stiffened and died. That man lifted up his voice in anguish and said, “Oh, I would not trade my son for all the rattlesnakes in the Blue Ridge Mountains.”
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.
_____
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.
The Battle of The Bottle part 2 Adrian Rogers
Uploaded by SovaSergey on Jun 23, 2011
The famous preacher Adrian Rogers gives a phenomenal message about alcohol. One of my favorite sermons of all time.
The Battle of The Bottle part 4 Adrian Rogers
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Now, I’m not saying they don’t love and serve God, perhaps they do. But most of these people think the only time they serve God is when they get off work! They end up giving their prime time to the employer and their leftovers to God!
The Daily Hatch 