Counsels for the Church - Ellen G. White

Satan's Most Destructive Device
Satan gathered the fallen angels together to devise some way of doing
the most possible evil to the human family. One proposition after another
was made, till finally Satan himself thought of a plan. He would take the fruit
of the vine, also wheat, and other things given by God as food, and would
convert them into poisons, which would ruin man's physical, mental, and
moral powers, and so overcome the senses that Satan should have full
control. Under the influence of liquor, men would be led to commit crimes of
all kinds. Through perverted appetite the world would be made corrupt. By
leading men to drink alcohol, Satan would cause them to descend lower and
lower in the scale.
Satan is taking the world captive through the use of liquor and tobacco,
tea and coffee. The God-given mind, which should be kept clear, is perverted
by the use of narcotics. The brain is no longer able to distinguish correctly.
The enemy has control. Man has sold his reason for that which makes him
mad. He has no sense of what is right.
Our Creator has bestowed His bounties upon man with a liberal hand.
Were all these gifts of Providence wisely and temperately employed,
poverty, sickness, and distress would be well-nigh banished from the earth.
But alas, we see on every hand the blessings of God changed to a curse by
the wickedness of men.
There is no class guilty of greater perversion and abuse of His precious
gifts than are those who employ the products of the soil in the manufacture
of intoxicating liquors. The nutritive grains, the healthful, delicious fruits, are
converted into beverages that pervert the senses and madden the brain. As a
result of the use of these poisons, thousands of families are deprived of the
comforts and even the necessaries of life, acts of violence and crime are
multiplied, and disease and death hurry myriads of victims to a drunkard's
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