170. The Liquor Seller
Today’s reading: “The Ministry of Healing” pp. 337–338.
Woe for the one who builds his palace through unrighteousness, his upper rooms through injustice,… Jeremiah 22:18
The work of the liquor seller is robbery, their customers do not get value for money. “Millions upon millions of dollars are spent in buying,
- wretchedness
- poverty
- disease (physical and mental)
- degradation
- lust
- crime
- and (finally) death.”
Yet the manufacturers and sellers are growing “rich on the pittances of those who (they) are leading to perdition.” And the effects on the family are generational poverty leading to prostitution and crime.
The World Health Organization agrees with all this in their 2004 report, and things have got worse since then (see p. 41ff).
Without much thought, I can think of half a dozen people I know personally or public figures who have had their lives, their careers or their families, destroyed by alcohol. You probably could too.
I would like to suggest other forms of robbery, where the victim’s mind and body are corrupted and destroyed for greed of gain, are,
- tobacco
- fast food
- soft drinks
- illicit drugs
- processed food
- the egg, dairy, fishing and meat industries (if previous chapters are to be believed)
But the alcohol industry has a lot to answer for, because “to a great degree” their expertise in advertising (and that of the tobacco industry) has been copied assiduously by these industries, so today in advertising,
Nothing is left undone to create and foster the desire for intoxicants.
Ellen makes this a spiritual issue. Satan, “the mighty destroyer of souls”, is behind all this. The liquor seller and his modern counterparts is indeed dealing in “slaves and souls of men.” (Rev. 18:13)
