Chuck Smith, founder of the Calvary Chapels and one of my favourite Bible teachers, was passionately against marijuana.  He tells of one day after church when he saw some boys, only about 10 or 11, smoking the foul stuff.   He said: ‘I looked at these little kids and thought how sad, how tragic, on a Sunday afternoon and these boys have nothing better to do than to get a joint and get loaded.  What a waste of life!

‘I’ve seen too many people with altered personalities and diminished capacities as a result of smoking marijuana.

‘To think that they are starting so young with a pattern that can just diminish their entire future, their capacity for the future.

‘Don’t tell me it isn’t habit forming!  I’ve met too many who can’t quit!

‘Don’t tell me it doesn’t alter the personality!  I’ve met too many altered personalities.

‘I’ve observed too many people who are not aware that their personality is altered, but it’s obvious to anyone standing apart and looking at them.

‘They still think that they’re cool.  They still think that they’re handling things, that everything is all right.  But they have an altered personality, very observable.

‘Wasted potential, wasted life! How tragic it is.

‘But then – the glorious gospel that we have!  God restores to a person those wasted years.    That’s so beautifull!  Therein is the grace of God.

‘I look at so many of the young men who are in the ministry today who began that path of wasted life ‘

And Chuck mentions one of the pastors who came to faith after virtually destroying his life by drugs.  But over several months he watched God restore that young man’s life and health, his marriage and give him a new direction.

‘God restored his sanity and the years that had been devoured.’

What a testimony damning  the stinking stuff which is now considered a ‘recreational drug’.  Perhaps that accounts for the insanity we see all around us now.

A grandmother in England told me of her 16 year old grandson’s death on a railroad track.  Some students at Oxford University were smoking and gave him a joint.  He later ran out to the train station and jumped in front of a train.

Our societies are sick, folks.  The only answer is repentance and turning  to God in absolute helplessness begging forgiveness for our many sins against Him. We need to get back to the Bible, to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but as marijuana becomes ever more accepted, the Bible becomes ever more neglected and despised.

We have sown the wind and are now beginning to reap the whirlwind.

*  You can get all Chuck Smith's Through the Bible teachings free on several websites including archive.com; just google in C2000 Pastor Chuck Smith.  I originally got them through his Costa Mesa church site and put them on an MP3 Walkman device which I listen to a lot.  He went verse by verse through the whole Bible, as did Dr J Vernon McGee, and I have both of them on MP3.  What a great blessing those men were and are,  You can find Dr McGee's teachings on www.ttb.org  Of course no one is right about everything and as a believer in a young earth and literal 6 day creation, I would not go to them for the creation account, but they were teaching before the creation scientists had proven to my perfect satisfaction that the earth is really about 6,000 years old. Not that I needed them to prove it - I just believed what the Bible said and it made perfect sense.  Now we have the science for it as well!