Quote:
Originally Posted by BrotherEastman
Wow! Looks like Elder E got under some skin. Well, anyway smoking is a sin as well as gluttony, but the plain truth of it is............................smoking is still a sin. Trying to justify smoking by bringing in gluttony is just a smokescreen that many of us shouldn't fall for. I understand that there are quite a few of you who have had issues with smoking and I thank God that you were delivered. Those of you that were delivered know that smoking is wrong, otherwise, you wouldn't have sought for deliverance and tried to quit because your conscience was eating at you.
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Or as is often the case someone told them it was a sin and so they tried to quit, not so much a case of conscience but peer pressure. Peer pressure can be positive but don't make it equal to conscience. Here is a perfect example.
While Mr. Spurgeon was living at Nightingale Lane, Clapham, an excursion was one day organised by one of the young men's classes at the Tabernacle. The brake with the excursionists was to call for the President on their way to mid-Surrey.
It was a beautiful early morning, and the men arrived in high spirits, pipes and cigars alight, and looking forward to a day of unrestrained enjoyment. Mr. Spurgeon was ready waiting at the gate. He jumped up to the box-seat reserved for him, and looking round with an expression of astonishment, exclaimed: "What, gentlemen! Are you not ashamed to be smoking so early?"
Here was a damper! Dismay was on every face. Pipes and cigars one by one failed and dropped out of sight.
When all had disappeared, out came the President's cigar-case. He lit up and smoked away serenely.
The men looked at him astonished. "I thought you said you objected to smoking, Mr. Spurgeon?" one ventured.
"Oh no, I did not say I objected. I asked if they were not ashamed, and it appears they were, for they have all put their pipes away."
Amid laughter the pipes reappeared, and with puffs of smoke the party went on merrily.
http://www.spurgeon.org/misc/cigars.htm
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