This example took place at a time prior to the health-damaging results of smoking we know today. Why does this medical knowledge add powerful reasons to avoid smoking? How do these reasons relate to God's sixth commandment?

Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?

They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.

Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.

At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.

Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.

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.

- Proverbs 23:29-34

The chief secretary of Rev. C. H. Spurgeon told the following story to Dr. Sale-Harrison and Dr. Shakespeare at the World Baptist Alliance meeting in 1911. Dr. Sale-Harrison published the story, due to Rev. Spurgeon being well-known as an avid smoker.

"One Saturday morning, Mr. Spurgeon went out for a walk; and when he came back, he said to me, 'I saw in a shop window down the street a can of tobacco, and on it a printed card reading: Spurgeon's Tobacco.' Then he asked me, 'When the Lord calls me home, shall I be remembered by the tobacco I smoked or by the Lord I preached? I can never again smoke to the glory of God.' Immediately he picked up all of his smoking paraphernalia and threw it upon the fire. For nine months, to the day of his departure to glory, he never smoked again."

In our country today, the misuse of alcohol produces even greater problems than smoking - also among certain groups of teens. God's Word strongly forbids and condemns drunkenness or "beginning to be drunken," the literal meaning of the frequently used Greek term translated "drunkenness." Several example references are recorded below.