(My pastor growing up was Adrian Rogers and he died 7 years ago today. He would have been 82 if he was still living. )

I love the Book of Proverbs and every day I read one chapter of Proverbs. Since there are 31 chapters, I start the 1st of ever month and read chapter 1 and then the next day I read chapter 2 and so on the rest of the month.

John McArthur said:

“First of all, number one issue in gaining wisdom is to fear God…is to fear God. How do you know that? Back in chapter 1 verse 7, we read this, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.” The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy one is true understanding.”

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One of the issues I have learned about in Proverbs is concerning the issue of alcohol.

ryan dunn Jackass dead in crash

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.

Billy Sunday told a story that illustrates this principle and I heard this story while Adrian Rogers was my pastor at Bellevue Baptist:

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 addicted to alcohol:

Proverbs 23:29-35
(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.
(33) Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.
(34) Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.
(35) They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.

More alcohol statistics:

• More than one-half of American adults have a close family member who has or has had alcoholism.
• Alcohol is a factor in nearly half of America’s murders, suicides and accidental deaths.

• The highest rates of current and past year heavy alcohol use are reported by workers in the following occupations: construction, food preparation and waiters/waitresses, along with auto mechanics, vehicle repairers, light truck drivers and laborers. 95% of alcoholics die from their disease and die approximately 26 years earlier than their normal life expectancy.

• Up to 40% of industrial fatalities and 47% of injuries in the workplace are linked to alcohol consumption and alcoholism.
• Absenteeism among alcoholics or problem drinkers is 3.8 to 8.3 times greater than normal.
• More than three fourths of female victims of nonfatal, domestic violence reported that their assailant had been drinking or using drugs.
• More than one third of pedestrians killed by automobiles were legally drunk.
• About half of state prison inmates and 40% of federal prisoners incarcerated for committing violent crimes report they were under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of their offense.
• Long-term, heavy alcohol use is the leading cause of illness and death from liver disease in the U.S.
• Alcoholics spend four times the amount of time in a hospital as non-drinkers, mostly from drinking-related injuries.

Probably the most telling is the last statistic: 95% of alcoholics die from their disease and die approximately 26 years earlier than their normal life expectancy.

Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970’s while pastor of Bellevue Baptist of Memphis, and president of Southern Baptist Convention. (Little known fact, Rogers was the starting quarterback his senior year of the Palm Beach High School football team that won the state title and a hero to a 7th grader at the same school named Burt Reynolds.)

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Uploaded by CBNonline on Sep 29, 2009

A couple of months ago I was listening to American Family Radio and I heard Terri Blackstock give her testimony. She said her decision to write Christian Suspense Novels was made after her husband listened to Adrian Rogers on American Family Radio and put his faith in Christ. That affected her and caused her to grow spiritually. Here  is her story below:

Testimony

The Battle of The Bottle part 1 Adrian Rogers

Uploaded by SovaSergey on Jun 23, 2011

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