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 Perhaps as you read my booklet on "Unwise Drinking" the thought occurred
to you, what about tobacco?  If a true Christian should avoid the use
of alcohol should he not also give up tobacco?

This is an important question that deserves careful study in the light
of the latest scientific discoveries and the principles your Bible
sets forth.

THOU SHALL NOT SMOKE?
If you hope to find the text that says "thou shall not smoke," you
will be disappointed.  Tobacco is not mentioned anywhere from Genesis
to Revelation and for
the very good reason that its use is of comparably recent origin. 
It was not known in Bible times.  In fact, Western Europe never heard
of it until Sir Walter Raleigh imported it from Tobago during the latter
half of the sixteenth century.  Nevertheless, the great principles
of health for living are so clearly enunciated in the Holy Scriptures
that no one need be in doubt as to what His attitude should be toward
this habit.

In this connection, it is good to read the apostle's inspiring challenge
to Christians of the First Century A.D. You will find it in the twelfth
chapter of his letter to the Romans: "I beseech you therefore, brethren,
by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be
not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing
of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable,
and perfect, will of God."

There is a definite suggestion here that every individual is accountable
to God for the condition of his body.  Having been created by God in
the beginning and redeemed by Him at Calvary, he belongs to Him by
a dual tie.  Consequently, he is not free to do as he pleases without
reference to God's desires.  He cannot with impunity debase, defile
or destroy his body if for no other reason that God has a prior claim
to it.  God expects it to be presented to Him as a "living sacrifice,"
unmarred by self indulgence.

TEMPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST
The sacredness of the body was also emphasized by the apostle in his
first letter to the Corinthians:
"What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost
which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For
ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and
in your spirit, which are God's.  (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
This is in full harmony with the teachings of Jesus who said,
"If a man love, me he will keep my words: and my Father will love
him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (John
14:23)

The body of the consecrated Christian is a dwelling place of God through
the Holy Spirit.  It is God's home, God's temple.  Consequently its
purity, health, and well-being are to be guarded as a sacred trust.

It is in the light of this great truth that all questions concerning
eating, drinking, smoking, and the like should be considered.  Every
habit should be brought to the bar of conscience and asked, Is it helpful
or harmful?  Will it increase or decrease health and efficiency?  Will
it glorify or defile God's temple?

Modern science has demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that using
tobacco is one of the most dangerous habits anyone could acquire. 
In recent years evidence has piled on evidence that it is one of the
major destroyers of health.  When all the facts are assembled, it may
well be said while liquor have slain its thousands, tobacco has killed
its tens of thousands. 

419,000 DEATHS PER YEAR
Smoking is the single most preventable cause of death in our society.
Each year, an estimated 419,000 people die in the Untied States as
a result of smoking. Government agencies and independent economists
estimate that smoking costs the nation as much as $100 billion a year
for lost productivity, medical bills, and insurance premiums among
other things.

$16 BILLION IN 1994
In 1994 Medicare spent $16 billion of the estimated $87 billion for
inpatient hospital care due to conditions attributable to smoking.

WHAT OTHERS SAY...
The following statement from Dr. Leroy E. Bernie, Surgeon General of
the United States was published in The Congressional Record, May 21,
1958: "Many independent studies have confirmed beyond reasonable doubt
that there is a high degree of statistical association between lung
cancer and heavy prolonged cigarette smoking---while there are naturally
differences of opinions in interpreting the data on lung cancer and
cigarette smoking, the public health service feels the weight of evidences
increasingly pointing in one direction - that excessive smoking is
one of the causative factors in lung cancer".
A study of six thousand eight hundred and thirteen persons by the late
Dr. Raymond Pearl, of Johns Hopkins University, shows that up to the
age of fifty the death rate of heavy smokers is more than double that
of those of non-smokers.  The number of smokers who survive to their
seventieth birthday is one and a half times that of the heavy smokers
of the same age.

In his book, Condition Of Reflex Therapy, Andrew Sulter affirms that
"the heavy smoker pays with 34.6 minutes of life for each cigarette
he smokes.  The pack a day smoker pays within eleven and a half hours
for each pack he smokes."

Harry Dinkman, in Risk Appraisal, published by the National Underwriter
Company, says, "Habitual smokers have 62% higher incident on gas in
the stomach, 65% higher incidence of colds, 76% higher incidence of
nervousness, 100% higher incidence of heartburn, 140% higher incidence
of labored breathing after exertion, 167% higher incidence of nose
and throat irritation, and 300% higher incidence of cough.
Dr. William J. Mirror, of the Mirror Co.,Rochester, Minnesota, made
a statement,: "I do not smoke, and I do not approve of smoking."  If
you will notice, you will see that the practice of smoking is going
out among the abler surgeons, the men at the top.

SMOKERS DIE SOONER
Powerful evidence against cigarette smoking has been produced by the
American Cancer Society, covering the smoking habits of 187,766 men
between the ages of fifty and seventy.  Dr. E Colar Hayman, Director
of Statistic Research  for the American Cancer Society and  Dr. Daniel
Horn, Assistant Director, summed up the findings thus:
"Cigarette smokers die sooner than other men age fifty to seventy,
and they die mainly from heart attacks and cancer."

This report was based upon interviews in New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
New York, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and California.
The interviewers first asked the individuals selected about their
smoking habits then checked on the causes of death of 4,854 of these
same men who died within the next twenty months.

Quoting again from the same report: It shows the death rate from all
causes among the cigarette smokers to be up to 75% higher than among
the men who never smoked.  For men who smoked a pack a day of cigarettes
or more, the death rate from heart disease and cancer is at certain
ages double that of non smokers.

"The risk seem to rise the more cigarettes are smoked--for those since
dead, 745 had smoked as much as a pack or more of cigarettes daily
for years.  This was 319 more deaths than would be expected if these
men had died at the same rate as the non-smokers."

"Of these heavy cigarette smokers, 334 fell victim to heart attacks
163 more than would be expected to have done so and 161 of them died
of cancer, 98 more than expected."

Dr. Charles Cameron, Director of the American Cancer Society, summarized
the findings this way: "If you smoke a pack of cigarette a day and
are 50 years old, you have twice as much chance of dying within eighteen
months as another man your age who has never smoked."

Dr. Alton Ochsner, President of the Ochsner Medical Foundation, and
Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Tulane University, has given
intense study to the relationship  of smoking and cancer.  Here are
some of his findings:
"There is a complete parallelism between the consumption of cigarettes
in the United States and the increase of lung cancer.

LUNG CANCER
Lung cancer has out stripped every other types of cancer in the recent
years.  There has been an attempt to blame air pollution, but I am
sure air pollution has nothing to do with it.  Washington University
in St. Louis has taken a robot machine that smokes cigarettes just
like a human being and used this to apply smoke to animals.  At the
end of two years, 44% of the animals had a cancer right where the smoke
had been applied.  It was indistinguishable from the cancer we see
in humans. 

"Lung cancer has gone up in the same proportion as cigarette consumption
wherever studies have been made - in Holland, Denmark, and England"


Studies show that many boys now begin smoking at the age of nine or
ten whereas they used to  start at about twenty.  This has led to the
peak incidence of lung cancer at the age of fifty or fifty five instead
of sixty five as formerly noted.

"After the age of fifty five the incidence of lung cancer falls off.
This is due to another factor.  The individual who has been a heavy
cigarette smoker for a number of years subjects his heart and blood
vessels to the deleterious effects of tobacco and is likely to develop
coronary thrombosis and die before he develops cancer of the lungs."

OFFICIAL STATEMENT
Research conducted in England is of particular interest because it
culminated in a statement in Parliament that smoking was the principal
cause of lung cancer.  This was followed by instructions from the Ministry
of Health to all local city councils on how to educate the public concerning
the dangers of smoking.  An official poster now been circulated throughout
Great Britain carries this warning from the Medical Officer of Health:
"It is my duty to warn all cigarette smokers that there is now conclusive
evidence that they are running a greater risk of contracting cancer
than non-smokers.  The risk mounts with the number of cigarettes smoked.
Giving up smoking reduces the risk."

One of the most impressive studies concerning the effects of tobacco
was conducted by the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research.
The subjects of the research were 564 Seven Day Adventists, chosen
because they do not smoke or drink.  Their records were compared with
those of 8,128 members of other religious groups, all patients in Adventist
hospitals.  The results, presented to the Session of the California
Medical Association, showed that among Seven Day Adventists, lung cancer
was only one tenth as common as among the general population and only
three fifths as many suffer heart attacks.

Not only did fewer Adventists in the test suffer fewer heart attacks,
but the age at which such attacks occurred was much more advanced than
for the other patients.  Only 2% of heart attacks occurred before the
age of forty four among the Adventists, against 8%  for the other group.
Only 11.8% were seen in Adventist people under fifty four, against
30% for the non-Adventists patients, and only 30% before the age of
sixty four, against 62% for the public at large.
The only case of lung cancer found among the Adventist patients occurred
in a man who had smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for twenty five
years before joining the church.
These statistics and facts are drawn out also in a study of the Mormon
group based in Salt Lake City, Utah which also forbids its members
to consume alcohol and to use tobacco.

MAJOR HEALTH EFFECTS
The major effects of smoking include:
1. Shortened life span.  Each year over 400,000 Americans and 2,5
million people worldwide die prematurely as a result of smoking.
2. Cancer of lungs, esophagus, bladder, kidney, pancreas and possibly
the stomach and cervix.  Smoking is responsible for 30% of all cancer
deaths in the United States each year including 87% of lung cancer
deaths.
3. Cardiovascular disease.  Smoking causes 30% of all heart disease
deaths each year.
4. Emphysema and chronic bronchitis.  Annually, some 80,000 Americans
die from lung diseases linked to smoking.
5. Underweight, sickly babies.  Each year, the deaths of more than
2,000 children under a year old are attributed to the mother's smoking
while pregnant. SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) accounts for a
high percentage of infants born to smokers.
6. Environmental smoking risks.  So-called "secondhand smoke" is responsible
for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually among non-smokers
and 150,000 to 300,000 cases of lower respiratory tract infections
such as bronchitis and pneumonia in children up to 18 months of age.

IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO QUIT
The risk of disease and premature death declines when a person stops
smoking, regardless of age.

With all this evidence to prove the harmfulness of smoking, it is surely
high time for all sensible, reasonable men and women to give up this
costly, health destroying habit.  And for all who love God and desire
to present their bodies "a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to
God."  This becomes an urgent imperative:  No one who regards their
body as a temple of the Holy Spirit could deliberately destroy it with
nicotine.

HOW DO YOU BREAK THE HABIT?
Medical authorities have made these suggestions:
When you decide to stop smoking, stop it.  Do it at once. Make a complete
break.  Destroy every evidence of the habit, including cigarettes,
cigars, ash trays and lighters. If an urge of smoking comes upon you,
eat a piece of candy or an apple.

More effective still is earnest prayer for divine help.  Tell God about
your desire and your result.  Open the door of your heart heaven-ward
and the Holy Spirit flowing in will bring you both strength and victory
in Jesus name.
