Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. And that's what we're going to do now. We're going to reprove the works of darkness. Wherefore, be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. Anything that keeps you from being wise is wrong. Anything that numbs you to the Lord's will is wrong. That's why it says in verse 18, Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. And we found out you can be drunk with wormwood, you can be drunk with marijuana, you can be drunk with nicotine. And the Bible says, drunkenness and such like, you shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Your salvation is free. But I'm going to tell you, inheritance into the coming kingdom of God for 1,000 years is a prize for overcoming. You've got to overcome the world. You've got to overcome the devil. You have to overcome your flesh. and we overcome by faith according to the Word of God. You have to believe that you have the power to overcome these things. These stinking cigarettes, they don't have any power whatsoever over you that the Lord Jesus cannot break and crush. The Lord Jesus can do it. I'm going to tell you, He's done it for a lot of people. He can do it for you right now. He can break the addiction to any sin our Lord is able. Now, we found out earlier today in part one how nicotine addiction is associated with depression. It's associated with anxiety and nervousness. It's associated with various degrees of insanity. And it is not a drug you want to play around with. And you say, well, wait just one second. How in the world would a drug like that begin to be accepted in America? Do you understand? Just about every drug, no matter how horrible, was at one time accepted among various classes of people, as you take a look at opium, as you take a look at cocaine that they used to put in Coca-Cola, you take a look at these drugs and understand that at one time, it was a social thing that was considered acceptable. And then they find out what a horrible thing it is, and now you know, oh, cocaine, let's stay away from it. Well, hey man, you ought to stay away from it. But there's some other things that are just like these drugs that you need to stay away from. And you say, well, if it was so bad, why in the world would not everybody agree? Well, it's very simple. If you happen to be a tobacco salesman, if you make your money, if your whole living is based upon tobacco, you have a motivation for deceiving people. I read to you from the 1800s and showed how preachers and doctors agreed that tobacco leads to insanity. Before World War I in America, the public was turning against tobacco. By 1900, four states had outlawed tobacco outright. 1900. I always believe it's so important for us as Christians to know where we came from. When you look out here today and you see the billboards, you see these advertisements for cigarettes, for tobacco, these types of things, you need to know how you got here. There's people that want you to think that that's normal. It's normal to be addicted to tobacco. Well, that's not God's normal. So you need to know that barely a little over a hundred years ago, four states had outlawed tobacco, just like you would outlaw heroin today. 43 out of 45 had anti-smoking legislation, which means the government was involved in trying to reprove cigarette addiction, nicotine addiction. By 1909, nine years later, 15 states had banned it. The perception in the public was this is an evil drug. But then World War I happened. And in 1917, when the US joined World War I, The tobacco companies found their answer. A ration pack that included tobacco was sent out to all of these soldiers. There were two reasons. If any of these soldiers come home, they're going to be addicted to tobacco already. And they'll come back home with their addiction. Two. They can now associate tobacco with patriotism. And that was the ultimate agenda. Companies began to market tobacco as patriotic. Isn't that something? You're a true American if you smoke. Isn't that amazing? That same indoctrination continued throughout the 20th century as all of the westerns and all of the family shows and these cowboy shows equated tobacco smoke with a good old patriotic, manly American. You really see that in the Marlboro man and that type of thing to where if you're a man, you're addicted to something. Now, is that the Bible's definition of a man? Being a servant to something that overcomes you? Is that the biblical definition of manliness? It's the opposite definition of manliness. But this is what these people are able to do. You're manly. That's what kids fall for today. Hey, boy. Hey, little punk. Come here. You want to be cool? You want to be manly? Smoke a cigarette. It's manly to stunt your growth. It's manly to cause yourself to become effeminate. It's manly to cause yourself to be addicted to something. And then once the kids get addicted, and their health is falling apart, they're losing their life, they want to go around to all the other kids and say, why don't you be stupid like me? Does that make any sense? The tobacco companies had this campaign and it went like this, if you are against tobacco, you are against our soldiers. Now you think how stupid, but for a lot of people it worked. Because the Bible says evil communications corrupt good man. You listen to the devil long enough, you'll start believing him. And so people don't understand when they look in magazines, when they listen to radio, when they see all of this advertisement, they do not understand the amount of manipulation that is going into what they're listening to. People walk around not understanding you have been trained, brainwashed to think a certain way by those little commercials that you hear that you didn't think affected you. You think you're in control of yourself and you're not even aware how much these things are acting upon you. There's people today in our Christian churches, I would say the majority of them, all of us, we do not aware, we are not aware how much our theology has been affected by advertising in the 20th century. Because of this manipulation, this ignorant manipulation, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1918 passed a resolution in Ohio. They say, resolve that this assembly deplores the alarming increase in the use of cigarette, denounces the false and alluring advertisements of them. Isn't that what churches ought to do? We denounce because they're prophets. So you know what the Presbyterian Church did? The Presbyterian said, that's false prophecy. You're equating cigarette smoking with patriotism. You're a false prophet. That's what preachers ought to do. That's what Christians ought to do. If you're the light of the world, you ought to say, you see that ad right here? That's a wicked from hell false prophecy. You see what they're trying to equate? They're trying to say that if you drink, you'll be happy. If you do this, you'll be cool. All of that meth. Do you know the world is filled with false prophets? That everywhere you look, this is why I've called, just about my whole ministry, I've called Christians to get out from under false teachers. Get out from under Hollywood. They'll have no power over you. You might pass a billboard on the street, but do you understand you will minimize the amount of manipulation? I'm calling all eves, I'm calling all men of God to get out from under their manipulation. sit there and listen to their lying trash because they have an agenda. Praise God, the Presbyterian Church, at least in that day, rebuked the advertising, the manipulation. Well, they weren't done. Big Tobacco hired a nephew of Freud, Edward Bernays. And by the way, Freud because of his tobacco addiction, ended up having his mouth pretty much fall off. He had holes all inside of his throat and mouth, and he was dying. And in his misery of dying from his tobacco addiction, he killed himself with morphine. How ironic that the whole world is so enamored with psychology, and that man didn't have power. to get rid of one addiction in his life. It killed him and then he killed himself. One of the most sissified, selfish things you could do on the face of the earth. Self-murder. Well, how interesting that Freud, who died because of this, his nephew began to be a master of propaganda, which means satanic, basically, seduction. Satanic seduction. And he knew how to stimulate people's emotions and fears and take advantage of them. And so, big business hired Edward Bernays and said, can you end up helping us with tobacco? Because, basically, we have a country that's turned against tobacco and we need to make tobacco acceptable. And Bernays said, I'll do even better than that. I'll get women smoking. They said, okay, have at it. So, Bernays applied his propaganda techniques and he began to associate cigarette smoking with beautiful models. And then he began to say, This right here is not a cigarette. It's a liberty stick. And do you see these ladies? They are independent ladies. Nobody tells them what to do. They are progressive. And look how pretty they are. Look at them as they march. Oh, do you see? Cigarette smoking is the way to show your mama and show every other man in this world that you're not going to take it anymore. You are not one of those old-fashioned ladies. You are a progressive, smart, educated lady. Well, immediately all them eves grabbed those cigarettes and began to smoke them and began to say, I'm sophisticated, see? I'm giving myself lung cancer. I'm killing myself. I'm smart. And they paid Edward Bernays money. They say, good job. That was pretty good. In fact, he was so good at it, Hitler said, we want you to teach us. And basically, he launched the Nazi empire on the same type of manipulation that Bernays had been so good at in World War I. So they linked tobacco with independence and liberty. Throughout subsequent decades, companies tried to make smoking appear normal. In fact, Philip Morris purchased Kraft and Nabisco. But they get their money from cigarettes, but they also sell craft products and Nabisco, same company. And what you see is, as people were watching their TV and their family was gathered around in the living room, they shouldn't have been listening, letting Hollywood preach to them like that, but they all gathered around and let Hollywood preach to their family. And no matter how wholesome the show was, go to that commercial where beer, cigarettes, Twinkies and coffee, Beer, cigarettes, Twinkies, and coffee. You're not normal unless you have beer, cigarettes, Twinkies, and coffee. And so everybody sits there. What do you think is going to happen? Forty years of families sitting around every night in their home with indoctrination. It becomes normal. If I'm not a coffee drinker, I'm not normal. Then every show. People are smoking. The star in the show stopping and getting a beer. It becomes so normal that now you're a normal American. Well, how do you know it's normal? Because they do it on TV. It's so normal. Everybody... Well, somebody paid those people to do that. Who do you think paid them? They began to launch a campaign. that says anybody that is against smoking is uninformed and they hate progress. They are ignorant, stupid people that are uninformed who will believe anything. They're a bunch of fanatics. Don't you let those fanatics keep you from your independence and your liberty and your progress. How ironic that recently Philip Morris admitted that smoking doesn't lead to but causes lung cancer, heart disease and other lung problems. You're telling me after a hundred years of this campaign indoctrinating people, now all of a sudden you're going to say, oh, well, yes, it does cause it. Now they're trying to save themselves from lawsuits, but it's very important that you see after telling people they're stupid for 80 years, now they come out today and they say, oh, well, all those people that were against us, they're right. What does that teach America? What does the Crisco thing, the same thing that happened in 1920? Experts never used butter, they always used Crisco. And then they killed a bunch of people with heart disease, only now to have the American Heart Association say, stay away from Crisco. I mean, what in the world's going on? What does this teach us as Americans? It teaches us that even now, today, there are things that they are trying to make normal, but they're not normal. And I find over and over again, I'm a little biased because I'm a preacher, but the preachers over and over again were right and the experts were wrong. Do you see that? Spock comes out with all their experts. Don't faint, children. If you stick close to that book, you'll be right. And it may take a hundred years to vindicate you, but let's not go by the crowd. You know why? The crowd is myth. It's a fable. They are making you feel a certain way by their money. Just to show you how this manipulation works, let me give you a tobacco ad from the 1960s. Right here in a big magazine, it says in the 19th century, the tomato was considered poisonous. Now we are being told that tobacco is a poison. The propaganda mills grind out dire warnings. Tobacco ad, 1960s. Well, I believe the tomato is poison. And I believe tobacco is poison, too. It's the same plant. It might not be a narcotic like tobacco is, but I don't want arthritis. The Bible said every green herb I've given unto you, and if you can't eat the green part, it's a poisonous plant. So unless you're going to eat tomato salad, I would counsel you to stay away from it. But I'm going to tell you something. Notice how ridiculous they are. They are making you feel stupid, if you dare say. And they're finding out they're wrong about the tomato. So that's how stupid these people are. Our forefathers were a lot smarter than we give them credit for. You understand that? And when it comes to this tobacco thing, You are to feel ignorant if you dare oppose one of their harmful narcotic substances. There was one model that appeared in 42 Winston cigarette advertisements. He finally repented. And here's what he said when he tried to change his life and undo all the damage he'd done. He said, my job when I modeled for R.J. Reynolds was to get kids smoking. I'll be honest. Whatever my company said was our agenda, that was the agenda. It was to get kids to start smoking. You say, why? Because cigarette kills people. And you only got a short time to sell cigarettes to them. You have, like homosexuals, you have to replace it with the next generation quickly. So, if they have to have a customer base, you've got to get the next generation addicted. Right now, since they're being limited in some ways, but they're not limited too much as we'll see, they're starting to have parties in various cities, where they hire these models to go in and bring kids to parties, and cigarette companies are paying for what they call social advertising in this way. They want the kids. You better believe they do. So, when children start smoking and they think they're being cool, they don't understand how stupid and foolish you're being. You've been preyed upon by some ads somewhere that you saw to make you think cigarette smoking, skateboards, and risk-taking, and don't listen to your mama. Oh, that's just what every little punk kid wants to hear. And they know it. They make money off of you the same way these rock and roll musicians make money off of you. They know exactly how your little mind thinks, and they know exactly how to instill rebellion in you, and you show how foolish you are when you walk away allowing them to act upon your mind. Every kid that follows it says, I'm going to rebel against my mom and smoke a cigarette. You don't understand how foolish you really are. That you're making people money, and they knew that you would be that stupid. This same man, R.J. Reynolds, of the same model, asked an executive for R.J. Reynolds why he did not smoke. He was on a set one day modeling and he's smoking his cigarette and he wondered, how come these big guys don't smoke? And in a court, he testified these exact words. The executive said to him, we don't smoke this blank. We just sell it. Smoking is for the young, the poor and the stupid. That was the mentality. We're making money. We are destroying their lives. Executives like us aren't that stupid. We will just make money off of stupid people. You say, how can they live with themselves? Easy, they just tell themselves, if I didn't deceive them, somebody else would, so I'm teaching them a lesson. Now, I don't think that's a justification before God, but that's the type of rationalization they give themselves. Dr. Michael Rabinoff, in Ending the Tobacco Holocaust, says cigarette ads aimed at young people portray cigarette smoking as a daring and rebellious activity. Since the beginning of cigarette advertising, cigarette smoking has been promoted as a symbol of independence and non-conformity. One of the lines was, no longer being your mother's child. The American Cancer Society found that teenage girls are particularly susceptible to this type of influence. One ad portrayed two matriarchal, seemingly uptight women criticizing the younger generation. See, this is how it worked. If you're a homemaker and you're what God wants you to be, you're uptight, see. And so, as they had these two matriarchal women sitting here looking at somebody on the beach, the two women said, this is shocking. This is ridiculous. Can you believe what these kids are becoming today? And at the end of the ad, you have a Pretty girl, a young hip girl, so-called, that stands up with her cigarette and says, well, shame on me, because I really like to have fun. Now, what does that do to people? 40, 50 years of this type of advertising. It says, if you don't smoke, you don't like to have fun. Well, you know what? There's a right way to have fun and there's a wrong way to have fun. Being immodest, messing up your family, messing up your life, messing up your health. When they show them on the beach laughing and having fun, that's not how it is. I come from that background. That's not how it is. Many of you come from that background. It's all a lie. Why don't they show you carrying around the oxygen tank? Why don't they show you what they look like five years later? Look at the pretty girl on the beach. Yeah, let me see her seven years later. Watch what happens with that type of drunken cigarette lifestyle. Kirk Douglas in 2003 said, who knows how many moviegoers have started smoking because of what they have seen on the screen. Evil communications corrupt good manners. They decided that they're going to use Cool as the bait, James Dean, effeminate homosexual sodomite. Oh, but nobody understands me. I'm going to walk around in my underwear, see? Walk around in my t-shirt because I'm cool. And give me a cigarette because I'm going to smoke. And suddenly all these kids are sitting at home. I want to be cool like James Dean. Nobody understands him either. And so these kids walk home to their daddy and, you know, they got their underwear on, got their t-shirt on, got grease all in their hair, and they're kicking back saying, you don't understand me, Dad. What are you talking about? How about I whoop your butt? You don't understand me. Don't understand me. And then he goes out here and dies. Smashes his car all up. Who cares? You think the tobacco company's scared? They used him to launch a agenda. Cigarettes equal cool. Two main Marlboro men died from tobacco. I think God killed them. The Marlboro man, see? He's manly and he smokes. God killed him. Killed him with tobacco. So the next Marlboro man gets up. The second famous Marlboro man. Okay, I'm now Marlboro man. God kills him with cigarettes. It's just like those guys coming up to go against Elijah. How many of you want to die, God says? Come up! Where's the next one at? I'll kill you too! So then the Winston man says, well, I'll do better than the Marlboro man. So he stands up and God killed him. What's God doing? Why is it whoever the leaders are of these movements, God makes an example of them? God makes an example. James Dean? You're going to die. Cigarette man, you're going to die. Do you think they put that in the ad? Do you think they give you an ad of the Western man on his nice horse, you know, the Western man carrying around his oxygen tank? No. They don't show you the holes in his face from tobacco. They don't show you that the guy can't even go up a hill without panting. He doesn't have any breath. That's manly, isn't it? Welcome to the new cowboy. He can't even go out to the barn and saddle his horse without huffing and puffing. This is serious stuff, folks. It's sad, but we as Christians in the light of the world have to learn to expose stupidity. It doesn't matter if it's everywhere. It just means everybody's growing in foolishness. One star who can no longer speak because of his cancer was one of the main ones that brought a bad boy image to the films with smoking. He was able to say, my hands are bloody, but so are Hollywood's. What's he saying? He's saying, yeah, I spent my life enticing kids to get addicted to cigarettes by showing them it's the cool thing to do. And so many thousands of kids followed me wanting to be just like me. And they grew up and had children who wanted to be cool. And everybody wants to be cool, whatever that means. But they know what it means because they're marketing an idea to you. They're not saying cigarettes are cool. They're saying all cool people smoke cigarettes. And what cool means is nobody tells me what to do. I'm a nonconformist. I don't follow orders by anybody. I do whatever I want to do. and I suffer a whole lot of consequences for it, and I don't care. I lose my job. I don't care. I drop out of school. I don't care. I've lost my kids. I don't care. I'm losing my health. I don't care. That's exactly what cool means today. I don't care about nothing. Well, there's a word for that. It's called insane. It's called ignorant, devil-possessed. The man in the cemeteries, cutting himself. He didn't care either. And they look just like that man. Devil possession isn't cool. Sylvester Stallone was given $500,000 if he would market tobacco in five feature films. He signed the contract and said, OK. So people go out and see this stuff. They don't even understand that there's a lot of business that goes on behind the scenes. That the reason the star, so-called, of the show grabbed that cigarette, there was a reason they did it. $500,000 to light up that cigarette in that movie. Because people are going to want to leave and want to be like Sylvester Stallone, a role model. And they don't even understand why they went to school the next day and wanted to smoke. Because they saw a movie that somebody paid $500,000. Do you think that's nothing for them? That's a few cents to indoctrinate thousands and thousands and thousands of kids. That's nothing. That's change to these people. You say, well, the government's really been against big tobacco lately. It looks like that. But all they did was just reshuffle a whole lot of things. And even though they had a lot of lawsuits against them, if you really start following a lot of it, you'll see that, oh, they were bound up in appeals after appeals after appeals, and they really didn't have to pay any money, and some of them were thrown out. And so sure, they had to pay some money, but it doesn't really matter to them because they're continuing their agenda. In fact, smoking in PG-13 movies, ever since this big government against tobacco thing happened, PG-13 movies increased 50% with smoking in it after they signed agreements with the state attorneys. So as they were signing agreements to supposedly put an end to big tobacco, they were signing deals with movie producers, men like Murdoch and all of these other men. They were signing agreements to bring in PG-13 movies that they market toward the younger folks to bring smoking into these movies. For example, In ending the tobacco holocaust, he says in 2002, 74% of all US movies depicted smoking. That's a lot of movies, isn't it? Including three-quarters of youth-related movies. Three-fourths of youth-related movies depicted smoking. 2007. Has smoking left? No, it hasn't. The bottom line. I'm sorry, in the real world, smokers tend to be poor and uneducated. In the movies, it is the powerful and successful who smoke. The bottom line is this. Tobacco companies need to replace the smokers who die with new smokers, the children of today, as we've already said. We talked about the fact that pharmaceutical companies have merged with the tobacco companies. And this is a funny little trick they got going. They get you addicted. on one side, then they have all of the drugs that supposedly help you stop smoking on the other side. Same companies. Same companies. They've got the cigarette smokings that give you the cancers and the diseases, and then they're running the drugs that they're going to put you on when you run to the hospital to try to take care of all of the sicknesses that you've got from your cigarette smoking. There's another big problem, folks. There's another big problem. Cigarettes are not what they used to be. And they used to be bad. They used to be bad. For example, healthcentral.com. A report by the Massachusetts Department of Health found that the amount of nicotine in cigarettes has steadily increased over the last six years. Testing in 2004 showed that 93% of cigarette brands fell into the highest range for nicotine. So what's happening? How is the nicotine growing more stronger nowadays? There's a lot of reasons, but I'll give you a few notes here. Cigarette filters are made of very thin fibers of a plastic called cellulose acetate. It's clogging up the environment, messing up fish, messing up. It's basically plastic. It looks like a little piece of cotton, but it's not. So when this smoker inhales this stuff, he's inhaling all of the plastic particles that go. And believe me, spend some time looking at what's happening when you're going around lighting plastic on fire and inhaling it. Folks, it can't be good. It can't be good. There's enough nicotine in four cigarettes to kill an average adult if ingested whole. If you sat down with your cornflakes and put four cigarettes in it and said, instead of just smoking, I'm just going to chop them up in my cornflakes, you're dead. Modern cigarettes are totally different than those before 1970. It's now what they call, you've heard of Freebase. Cocaine is now freebase nicotine. They discovered how to cause the nicotine to be stronger to where you are freebasing nicotine. Not only that, it's grown with dangerous fertilizers. So you can imagine what's in your sweet potatoes and cucumbers when you buy it conventional. What do you think's in your cigarette? What do you think they're doing? Fertilizers for this tobacco. I mean, it must be insane. And it gets a lot worse than that. Rabbanah says that cocoa is a common ingredient in cigarettes. When burned, it releases a bromide gas. Sugars are added to cigarettes to enhance the flavor. However, according, that's what they say, but according to Victor de Noble, a former tobacco industry scientist, according to industry scientists, they believe that by burning sugar, the addictive effects are enhanced. So you got chocolate and cocoa, when burned, produce theobromine. And when burned, it's bad enough just having that theobromine in the chocolate itself. It's one of the addictive drugs of chocolate. But when you burn it, it becomes a carcinogen. In addition, tobacco companies also use other additives called flavors to intensify the effect of nicotine on the nervous system. Also, there's isovaleric acid, which acts as a pheromone. Now, the question is, I'm not even going to tell you where they get that stuff from, and it supposedly stirs up fornication and that type of thing. Why do they stick that in cigarettes? What do they do? Why do they think they needed to stick that? In fact, you don't know what in the world is inside these cigarettes. It doesn't come with an ingredient list, folks. In fact, the ingredients are hidden from people for the most part. But we do know carbon monoxide, acetone, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, benzene. Massive quantities of benzene. And they closed down one of these water companies or at least made them pull some water because they found a little bit of benzene in it. But yet a cigarette has hundreds of times more benzene in it. Now, what do you think happens when a person lights up something with nicotine and thousands of other chemicals in the air? And when he lights that, he's inhaling cocoa and inhaling sugar. What happens when you smoke sugar? Is sugar good by itself? What happens when you smoke it? So you walk away from the cigarette, no wonder you grab an Oreo. No wonder you're addicted to chocolate and everything. You're inhaling sugar and chocolate with pheromones, with a whole bunch of words I can't even pronounce. According to BBC, cigarettes are a complex cocktail of chemicals. Smoking a cigarette is one of the most unhealthy things a human can do. Should Christians be doing one of the most unhealthy things a human can do? Are these fundamental Christians talking? No, BBC, Europe News, 30% of all cancer deaths can be attributed to smoking. So people are dying of cancer, about a third of those are from cigarettes. Cancers other than lung cancer, which are linked to smoking, include cervical, cancers of the mouth, lip and throat, pancreatic, bladder, kidney, stomach, liver, leukemia. But cigarettes are not just made of tar, tobacco and nicotine. More than 600 additives can legally be added to tobacco products, and you don't even know what they are. But we do know they include coffee, sugar, vanilla, cocoa. Smoke your coffee today. Smoke your hot chocolate. Smoke your Tootsie Roll, High fructose corn, sir. Smoke your MSG today. I tell you what, not only do I not want to smoke one, I don't want to be anywhere near anybody that does. I think I'm glad we're getting some of those laws like they had in our early colonies. You had to smoke. You had to stay way away from somebody's house. You couldn't come anywhere near somebody's house. That was the law. These things have sinister effects. For example, cocoa when burned in a cigarette produces bromine gas that dilutes the airways of the lung and increases the body's ability to absorb nicotine. I see. When you smoke chocolate, it increases your addiction to nicotine. Techniques employed by tobacco companies include addition of ammonia compounds. They used to put urine upon the tobacco plants. It has something to do with the delivery of nicotine. Well, now they use ammonia, which is pretty much, you know, the same stuff here. No telling where they get it. Which speeds the delivery of nicotine to smokers. Addition of chemicals such as a salad to hide and pyridine. that act to strengthen nicotine's impact on the brain and central nervous system. The tobacco companies have also developed ways to increase the nicotine content of the cigarette. There is now genetic engineering of tobacco plants to substantially boost nicotine content. You think a bunch of cigarette smokers care about the fertilizer in the tobacco? You think they care about additives? You think they care about GM genetic engineering? They could care less. And they've designed a way to make sure you're addicted to this stuff. Research has shown that the key purpose of putting extra additives into cigarettes is to improve their potency and ultimately their addictiveness. So when they say, oh, we're putting chocolate and our cocoa, we're putting cocoa and sugar and cigarettes to make them taste good. No, that's not why you're doing that. They still taste terrible. You're sticking chocolate and sugar inside cigarettes, so when people smoke it, it adds to their high, and it also increases their addiction. They want to go back to that cigarette now, because now you've got a triple addiction. Not only the nicotine, but whatever's in that chocolate, whatever's in that sugar, I'm sure it's stimulating that addiction even more. Using tobacco ruins your health. Let the smoker once be attacked by disease, and then it will be difficult to remove it than to do so in one free from such a habit, says a dissertation on medical properties in 1832. You say, I look pretty good. Wait till you get sick and see if you'll be able to heal yourself by the Lord's grace. Maybe you can, but I tell you what, I wouldn't mess around with it. Michael Robinoff again says currently about one fifth of Americans die in some way because of cigarette smoking. One fifth of Americans. That's a fifth of Americans. Every single day, more than 1,000 Americans die because of cigarettes. Today, this Lord's Day, as I'm speaking, 8,000 American people die because of cigarettes. 8,000 a day pass away. I'm sorry, 8,000 a week. 8,000 a week. More than 50,000 die each year. from second-hand smoke. So every day you wake up pretty much, another thousand disappear because of cigarettes. 50,000 a year, that's from second-hand smoke. That's from breathing the junk other people blow on you. About 650 million individuals currently alive in the world will die from cigarette-related illnesses. 4,000 chemicals are released when a cigarette is smoked. One woman would run outdoors to smoke because her young daughter had asthma, but her hair and clothes still reeked of the stuff. So when she went back inside, her child's breathing was still adversely affected. I have documentation on all of these lung issues and respiratory problems that these young children have just from being in the presence of somebody that has been smoking, whether they blow the smoke on them or not. Even cats living in homes where people smoke. are more than twice as likely as other cats to acquire deadly cancer. And you've got to throw that in because people don't care much about the children anymore. But tell them if their cat or dog is going to have his life shortened because of cigarettes, now they'll start listening, see. Smoking is a major cause of strokes. Smokers are more likely to have upper respiratory tract infections. It harms the body's ability to fight infections, and many of the health effects of secondhand smoke, including asthma, are most clearly seen in children. Just a reminder of some of the health. We've been concentrating upon the behavioral problems, the brain issues, but don't forget the health. Don't forget the health things. For example, nicotine is linked to fatigue, sloth, and despondency. That's supposed to be despondency. James Thomas Whitaker, in 1893, says it subdues ambition and reconciles to idleness. In other words, if you weren't on the nicotine, you'd say, I could never just sit here and watch a soap opera and smoke. But when you start getting that cigarette, you just want to go outside and talk and gossip, and you just want to sit, and you just feel okay about sitting around and being idle. When if you didn't have that cigarette, you'd have ambition to want to get something done, see. Howard Louis Dodge in Kaiser Nicotine says, Nicotine causes a distaste for physical exertion. It causes a loss of vigor. Smoking makes the soldier short of wind. Robert H. Fry, Cigarette Facts in 1939, says smokers are suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, the stuff that comes out of the back end of a car. Nicotine constricts the blood vessels, raising the blood pressure and causing a pep feeling, but then follows depression. Furfural is 50 times as poisonous as alcohol. And this drug is found in tobacco, and it causes tremors and twitching. So you're basically getting this furfural poisoning, and that's why you're tremoring and twitching and paralysis of the respiratory muscles. You become short-winded. The face becomes ashen, the skin drawn and haggard. Think of what you're doing to your skin with a cigarette. Cigarettes do give you jumpy nerves. Hudson Maxim says, if all the boys could be made to know what with every breath of cigarette smoke, they inhale imbecility and excel manhood. So at every smoke you take, you're becoming less of a man and more of a fool. As a Christian, you can stop smoking. Let me read some verses to you today and some quick statistics before we close. Hugh Pyle, A preacher in How to Quit Smoking says you don't have to be a Christian to quit smoking, but it will sure help. When the great revelation came out in 1964 about the link between tobacco and lung cancer and heart disease and bronchitis, thousands of doctors and scientists quit smoking. Tobacco ads show handsome young men and pretty girls on fine horses, healthy and clean cut, and happy as they puff away. But nicotine is now being called the most addictive of drugs. Women who have foolishly listened to ads, you've come a long way baby, ought to look around. See what they look like. There are young people who got hooked while fooling around with the vice. Some people attend churches where the pastor never preaches against sin and is afraid to mention slavery to habit. And God forbid that I refuse to preach or neglect to preach in such a way that would help you be reminded and to get power over such addictions as this. In smoke signals, Christina Dye in 2009 says at least one 1,100 US deaths a day are caused by smoking and the rate is climbing. 30% of all heart disease deaths are directly linked to smoking. If you smoke, quit. Period. End of discussion. Everybody stops smoking sooner or later. If it sounds impossible, you're only kidding yourself. You'll say, well, how do you know I'm only kidding myself? Because you have the power of God, number one. Number two, without the power of God, most people stop smoking. In fact, in America, 23.1% of men smoke. Now let me ask you a question. If only 23% of men smoke, that means that the other 80% of men have either neglected it out of wisdom or they quit. Now, where should a Christian be in this mix? At 23% of men, should you as a Christian be of that small number of people who are killing themselves? I don't think so. I don't think so. 18% of women smoke, according to National Health Interview survey. 18% of women smoke. Should you be of that number as a daughter of Christ? If they said 97% of women smoke, I would still stand up here and say, you ought to be of the 3%. By the grace of God, you ought to be of the 3% who don't. But this is insane. Only 18% smoke. No daughter of Christ should be found among that 18%. Because the rest of Americans have figured out how to not smoke. And if the rest of Americans have figured out how to not smoke, you can figure it out too. Now if all of these Americans are not smoking, and thousands of them are quitting, 1 John 4 says, greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. They can stop smoking and you've got something greater in you than they have. So where should we be? We ought to be at the head of the line, folks. You ought to be leading the way. Titus 2 says that women ought to conduct themselves in such a way that the Word of God be not blasphemous. Men, women, every Christian ought to conduct himself in such a way that the Word of God is not blasphemed. You know how the Word of God gets blasphemed? When somebody that's not a Christian is in the Oprah Winfrey New Age religion and can stop smoking and has put away the smoke and takes care of their body And then they look over at your life and see you puffing on a cigarette and see you a slave to addiction. And then you want to go tell them, you know what? Jesus died for your sins. They laugh. They might not laugh to your face, but they go home and they have conversations with their family members and they say, you know what? That person over there thinks they're holy by this Christianity stuff, but yet they smoke. Look at them. It's not good, is it? It does blaspheme the Lord. Because we ought to be of that number that is not bound, because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. It says in Hebrews 11, by faith Noah being warned of God, of things not seen as yet, moved with fear. We can't see the judgment yet, but we can see it by faith. And we can say, I want Jesus to say, well done, to me. I want to be of that number, that few, that Jesus says, well done, thou good and faithful servant. And all we got to do is have faith. We just got to have faith. Matthew 7, ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Does anybody here think that if you ask Jesus to take cigarettes away from you, Jesus would say no? Does anybody really think that Jesus who said, come and ask of Me, and you'll find. Come seek and you'll find. That if you go to Jesus and say, will you please, Give me power to stop smoking. You know what Jesus would say? It's already done. I've already given it to you. Just go and do like David ran after Goliath. You go and do what you're supposed to do. And trust Me. But that paralyzed man says, but I'm paralyzed. How can I stretch out my hand? Just reach your handle now. Just do what the Lord said. And you'll find the strength to do it. Lazarus was dead in the tomb. The Lord said, come forth, Lazarus. Lazarus could have sat in there and said, now how can I come forth? I'm dead. When you're dealing with Jesus, He's the Word of Life. The same Jesus that can tell a dead man, come out of that tomb, he can get up and walk. The same Jesus that can tell a paralyzed man, get up off your bed and walk. He can get up and walk! You say, I'm too weak to stop smoking. That's fine. But Jesus is strong. And so, be strong in Jesus. He never said, be strong in your own strength. He said, be strong in the power of His might. Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. What about this? Hebrews 4, Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace. Are you saved? If you're saved, you have access to the throne of grace. You can come to the throne of grace that when you obtain mercy, that's where you go to God and you say, Lord, please forgive me for smoking. Please forgive me for chewing spit tobacco. Please forgive me for huffing on a cigar. giving myself throat cancer and all kinds of mess, ruining my testimony. Please forgive me, Lord. Thank you for preserving my life this far. And now, Lord, I need some help in time of need. I want you to strengthen me, dear Lord. I'm asking, I'm knocking right now, and Lord, I want you to strengthen me and give me power over cigarettes." And the Lord said, you're going to obey me? He said, yes, sir, Lord, I'm going to obey you. And the Lord said this. The Lord said, look not thou upon the wine. Make not provision for the flesh. Come not nigh, saith the Lord. Stay away from people who smoke. Stay away from advertisements that stir up smoking. Stay away from anything that makes it easy for you to smoke. And by the Lord's strength, He will empower you not to smoke. Smoking is a sin. And it says in Romans 6, sin shall not have dominion over you. You know what will help you get rid of sin is when you learn to hate it. When it stinks in your sight. And cigarettes stinking in your sight ought to be pretty easy. Go before the Lord and look at what it does to people. Look at what it does to your testimony. Look at how it stops your prayers from being answered. Look how it endangers your soul at the judgment seat of Christ and learn to hate it. Learn to hate being bound to things. And that is the thing that will give you power, is when you learn to hate being bound to cigarettes or bound to any sin. Seeing what the devil's done to you by that sin. Learn to hate it. And finally, 1 Corinthians 10 says, "...there hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to men." I mean, people in America get rid of cigarettes every day. How many Christians have done it by the power of Christ to give glory to God? And as Christians, we give glory to no other because we know that even out here in the world, God gave them the ability to breathe. God gave them the ability to even live another day. So we give glory to our God. And certainly when we get rid of sin, we give glory to God. But notice this. God is faithful. Is God unfaithful? If God's unfaithful, then you might have trouble quitting smoking. But if God is faithful, He will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it. And the only thing is simply, why didn't you do it long ago? The Lord's been waiting the whole time. He's been waiting to answer. He's been waiting to answer your prayers. He's been waiting to give you the peace that passeth understanding. But He says, hold on a second. To get peace, you have to cast your care upon Me. You have to come with thanksgiving. And you have to think good thoughts. And you have to do whatever you've learned from the Apostle Paul to do. The Apostle said, don't be addicted to anything. So if you want the peace, the passive understanding, you've got to come to God right now. And you've got to pray. You've got to give Him thanks. You've got to confess your sin. And you need to get up and obey what Paul tells you to do. And Paul tells you, don't look at it. Paul tells you, make not provision for it. Paul tells you that you should not come under the power of anything. And He tells you right here that you are able to quit smoking. This is what's so beautiful about it. He says right here that there is no temptation that hath taken you. You can stop smoking. If something in your mind tells you you can't stop smoking, it's Satan. If anything in your mind tells you I cannot do it, it's Satan telling you that, my friend. It's Satan. The Holy Ghost is saying with My power, you can. You can. There was a little boy once Every day, he cut off another inch of his doggy's tail. And they said, boy, why'd you do such a thing? And he says, I didn't want it to hurt. I didn't want it to hurt. He needed to cut his tail off, but he figured that if he takes it off an inch at a time, day by day, it'd be better for the dog. That's how a lot of people are with cigarettes. I'm just going to torment myself a little bit, a little less, a little less, a little less. Just cut it off. Just cut it off. You've got three weeks of pain. Just cut it off. Cut it off. Three weeks of suffering and then it's all over. It's all over. The battle's done. Dear Holy Father, Please, please, dear God. Anyone who's listened to this sermon, Lord, that's been moved to try You, Lord, to prove and taste that You are good, to walk in the old paths and find Your rest, Lord, please, God, strengthen them. Oh, Lord, we know You're going to do it. We know You're there. We know you're readily available and we can do all things through you. I pray in the name of Jesus. That you would rebuke the devil, Lord. That you put a hedge behind everyone who's heard this sermon and give them, Lord, fiery motivation by faith. to move and be strengthened in their inner man, to get strength over the body and to deny the lust of the body till they bring that body under subjection and it's no longer addicted to these hurtful things, Lord. God, we do give You thanks and know You can do it and You've already done it in so many ways. Please continue to keep doing it in Kingdom Baptist Church. May all addiction cease in Kingdom Baptist Church except for being addicted to the ministry, Lord. In the name of Jesus, we give You thanks. Amen.