Proverbs 23:29-35, “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. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.
I thank God that my parents sent me to an old-fashioned Independent Baptist Church and school as a teenager, which set my course in life. I decided as a young boy, from hearing my pastor preach against the dangers of booze, that alcoholic beverages would never touch my lips. By God's grace, I have kept that wise decision. I hate booze!!!
Dear reader, you cannot take two drinks of alcohol if you don't take the first, and if you don't take the first drink you'll never run the risk of getting drunk once, or worse, becoming a lifetime alcoholic. Booze ruins lives! The beer companies have much blood on their hands. They cannot hide behind the lame excuse that 99% of beer drinkers are responsible, because THEY FULLY KNOW that some people when down and depressed, or seeking a good time, will drink in excess and suffer for it, or kill someone else in the process while inebriated.
Tragically, Friday evening on March 8th, 2024, a young 22-year-old college student visiting from Missouri, Riley Strain, got drunk at Country singer Luke Bryan's bar in downtown Nashville. The bar's employees kicked Riley out of the bar, because he was visibly drunk. Riley was recorded on numerous security cameras stumbling down the street, in the park and at one point ran into a post and hit his head. For 2 weeks everyone's been searching for Riley, because he hadn't been seen since the night he got drunk at Luke Bryan's bar. Sadly, Riley's dead body was found floating in the local river 8-miles downstream. Evidently he stumbled into the river drunk and drowned.
I was upset when I learned about this matter, because it further shows how selfish, rotten and irresponsible we are as Americans in this wicked generation. Sadly, it has become the “norm” for young people to get drunk at bars and then just be kicked out. It upsets me because Luke Bryan's ungodly tavern helped Riley get intoxicated, while allegedly “having a good time.” When they got all his money, and he clearly had too much booze to drink and was now becoming a problem for the business, they just kick him out and made him somebody's else problem. Well, that act of cruelty cost Riley his life on earth!
Granted, Riley is mostly to blame for being foolish to drink booze. I don't know what his parents taught him when raising him, but every parent should teach and warn their child about the stupidity and danger of drinking alcohol, and the terrible sin in God's sight of getting drunk (1st Corinthians 6:9-11). Yes, drunkenness is a sin! Drinking booze is not a sin, but it is unwise (Proverbs 20:1). Very few people know when they've had too much to drink! All it takes is ONE TIME of drinking too much alcohol and it may cost you your life, or worse, cost someone else's life that you stole from them because of your wickedness.
If I had my way, all alcoholic beverages would be outlawed, because they have been proven time and time again to be nothing but a menace to society. I have stood over the white caskets of a dead mother and her baby, who were ruthlessly murdered by a drunken driver. The murderer only suffered minor injuries. I doubt if he spent more than a year or two in prison, if that. I'll never forget seeing that little tiny white coffin being lowered 6-feet into the dug grave. You couldn't pay me to drink booze!!! I thank and praise God that I learned at an early age about the evils of drinking booze.
My humble thought in this matter concerning Riley Strain is that we've got a serious alcohol consumption problem in the United States, that no one wants to talk about. Alcohol consumption is the white elephant in the living room. All I've been hearing and reading in the news today is that the city of Nashville is mourning the death of Riley Strain. Sadly, they are mourning the wrong thing! They should all be mourning the alcohol problem in our ungodly society, which has been ongoing since 1933 when the Prohibition Era ended, and it is only getting much worse. It is tragic that the court system actually protects drunk drivers more than the victims they murder.
As far as I'm concerned, Luke Bryan should be sued and held responsible for Riley's needless death, since it was his employees that sent a drunken man out onto the street, who was clearly not in his right mind. It is unsafe for anyone who is so intoxicated that they are stumbling, and talking incoherently, mumbling. Riley was drunk, period. What kind of society do we live in today, when bar businesses only care about taking a customer's money, but then when that individual gets drunk on THEIR ALCOHOL, they throw them out the door and wash their hands of the problem, sending that patron into harm's way without a concern in the world for him. Luke Bryan doesn't give a damn about Riley as a human being. His accursed bar sold Riley a bunch of alcohol, got him drunk, and then threw him under the bus (or in this case the local river). Luke Bryan might as well as have pushed Riley in the river himself.
There needs to be a new federal law nationwide, which requires bars, night clubs, casinos, hotels and restaurants to contact police when someone is clearly inebriated with alcohol, because they are a risk to them self and others. If that is too much burden for the police to handle, then the sale of alcohol must be banned, except by a doctor's prescription for medical purposes only. We cannot continue to allow people to get drunk and just die.
Sadly, Riley drank the booze, and then the booze drank him, and then the river. Since the beginning of human civilization, alcohol has been a menace. Noah got drunk, which caused his son to sin, and it strained their father and son relationship permanently. Lot got drunk, which resulted in him impregnating his two daughters, and fathering two heathen races. I dare you to show me even one good thing that happened in the Holy Bible when someone was drunk. Kindly said, you cannot!
When I lived in Chicago, I was fishing for perch one summer day at Olive Park at Lake Michigan. As I was fishing, a man walked by and warned us to be on the lookout for a dead body, which we might snag, because a drunk man had drowned. I am a caring person, so I walked quickly over to the park overhang platform over the lake, where the drunken man had climbed over the safety railing and jumped into the water. He couldn't swim (likely because he was too drunk to remember how), so he drowned and went under. Rescue divers came several minutes later from the local fire department. They went into the water where the man had jumped in, and that is exactly where they found his lifeless body. I'll never forget seeing his swollen feet and body, pickled with water. To my horror, people were laughing and having a good time who stood around, telling jokes, watching the paramedics attempt to revive the dead man. He was gone! To this day I wonder where he went in eternity, Heaven or Hell?
Oh, the foolishness of drinking booze! What a dangerous thing to do. If you drink alcohol I am not condemning you, that is not my place. By as a Christian and a Bible Baptist preacher, I feel compelled to warn everyone about the dangers of consuming booze. My father was a Skid Row minister. Over the years of my childhood, I saw hundreds of bodies laying in the sidewalk, in the street gutter, not knowing if they were dead or alive. Even in the dead cold of winter, I saw men (and some women too) laying on the ground drunk. Many were huddled in doorways, and wherever they could seek shelter from the fierce freezing wind.
My Dad took all of the following photos for the Mission's monthly bulletin, to try to raise money to keep the Mission's doors open to help these broken men. This first photo is of the Chicago United Mission, located at 34. S. Desplaines in downtown Chicago. The building was torn down nearly 40 years ago. I grew up tagging alongside my father at this rescue mission...
The Devil is a beautiful liar! Satan only shows you the bright neon lights of Sin City Las Vegas, he doesn't show you the local morgues, hospitals, courtrooms, prisons and cemeteries where sinners end up. The Devil always pays with counterfeit money. All of Satan's apples have worms! Sin will take you farther than you wanted to go, cost you more than you intended to pay, and keep you longer than you planned to stay. I could mention the names of thousands of famous people whose lives have been forever ruined because of alcohol. Just ask idiot Leif Garret (born 1961):
Garrett admitted that he started using drugs when he was 14. On November 3, 1979, five days before his 18th birthday, he crashed a Porsche 914 that was being leased to his mother after a midnight party while he was driving to buy more cocaine. His blood alcohol level was three times over the legal limit of that time and place, and he was high on Quaaludes. The accident left his passenger and friend, Roland Winkler, a paraplegic. Garrett had only met Winkler about a month earlier. Neither Garrett nor Winkler was wearing a seatbelt. Garrett was later tried as a juvenile on drunk-driving charges; his driver's license was suspended for a year and he was placed on a year's probation. Winkler sued in January 1980, claiming Garrett was at fault in the accident. WIKIPEDIA
Garrett got a slap on the wrist for completely ruining his so-called “friend's” life. And while we're on the subject of friends, I'd like to mention Riley Strain's so-called “friends” who saw him drunk as he left Luke Bryan's bar. THOSE WERE NOT HIS FRIENDS!!! No true friend lets you stumble home drunk! Riley was trying to stumble back to the hotel where he was staying with his “friends,” but ended up dead from drowning in the local river. With friends like Riley's who needs enemies? Friends don't allow friends to get drunk, and then leave them in harm's way so they can get hit by a car, bust their head open on the sidewalk concrete, or drown in a river. Where were Riley's so-called “friends”? They didn't care about him one iota!!!
Dear reader, our culture has deteriorated so much into selfishness and greed, that people don't care anymore about someone who is obviously intoxicated with booze, until they get slammed into by a speeding bus, fall down a flight of stairs and crack their skull open, stick a fork in their eye, et cetera. What is wrong with people? Why don't we care about each other? A police officer's bodycam in Nashville recorded Riley stumbling by. Since when don't cops care about drunk people who cannot even stand up properly? Likely the cops were told by their bosses to let people have a good time, and look the other way, to keep the tourists coming. Nashville is the SIN CITY Las Vegas of the south!!! The people and major of Nashville have blood on their hands and should all be ashamed. These types of insane deaths shouldn't be happening. This was no accident, this was reckless behavior (both on the part of Riley, his friends, Luke Bryan's stupid bar, the police and a city that is used to wickedness).
Dear reader, nothing will change until we change it. If we are to change the future, we must disturb the present. Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida today just outlawed homeless people living in tents in public places. I say Amen and amen! The new law goes into effect in October 2024. Taxpaying citizens are sick and tired of being harassed by homeless people squatting in tents all over the community. There are shelters, missions and places where the homeless can seek refuge, but they don't want to follow any rules. Well then jail will be their new home! I am proud of governor DeSantis. There must be rule of law in any society!
And I'll tell you something else, in Florida the government doesn't put up with squatters stealing your vacant home to live in. In idiotic liberal places like New York and Chicago, illegal immigrants are breaking into empty houses and living there. When the landlord finds out and tries to evict the illegal tenants, the landlord is threatened with arrest and jail. It takes YEARS to get a legal eviction for those criminal squatters, and they don't pay a single penny in rent all the time they steal your home from you. Two centuries ago the illegal tenants would have been shot. You don't just steal someone else's home. Where is our government? I really hate what American has become! Don't try that in Florida, because illegals will go to jail, as they should. Florida is paradise compared to New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Anyway, I am upset over the needless death (murder) of Riley Strain. The police in Nashville said there was no “foul play” involved. Are you kidding me? In Michigan this past month, a mother and father were both found guilty of manslaughter for giving their 14-year-old son access to a gun that he used to murder for peers at school. What hypocrisy! So why a bar can help get people drunk, and then toss them out on the street while intoxicated and barely able to stand up, without any consequence when they die? Our justice system is messed up! If somebody gets plastered drunk at YOUR ESTABLISHMENT, and then you kick them out the door, then you should bear the responsibility to make sure they get home safely.
Taverns accept no liability at all for helping to get people drunk! You couldn't offer me enough money to start and own a tavern, because I fear God and realize that someday I have to give account for everything in my life (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14; Romans 14:10-12). We live in a very selfish, greedy and irresponsible culture today in America, where people want to make money at all cost, giving no thought to the people and families they hurt in the process. It is evil.
In the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 22:8, if you had a roof with no railing, and somebody fell off and got hurt or died, you were responsible for their blood. It is a matter of being ethical. Beer producers and bars just want to make money, without accepting any liability for the shady nature of their illicit business. Alcohol was banned during Prohibition for a good reason. There were (and still are) dry counties in the United States for a good reason. That reason is because booze destroys families and lives!!! If you want to drink LIQUID DEVIL, then you are the fool, but I refuse to put that poison into my body. As Roland Tembo says in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, “No thank you. I believe I've spent enough time in the company of death.”
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