We all know that tobacco is a natural plant which is now grown in many parts of the world and many people smoke its leaves in pipes or made into cigars or cigarettes. It is also chewed as snuff or chewing tobacco, and only a very few people realize the dangerousness of the drug it contains.

Why would anyone want to suck such a deadly poison into their bodies?

The reasons are many, including clever advertising, peer pressure and the example of parents or other relatives, and this points up just how “devilish”  Satan  really is! Look at the advertisements for cigarettes and other tobacco products. They all show pretty or handsome people enjoying a brand of cigarette or chewing snuff or chewing tobacco. The little “Surgeon General’s Notice” that “Smoking may be hazardous to your health,” in its little black on white box is no match for the beautiful full color picture of the movie star or other celebrity. Not once will you see big advertisements of the other side — the person whose lip looks like a chunk of raw hamburger meat and stinks of dead meat! You are never given the picture of the underweight and sickly babies born with lung disorders because their mothers smoked during pregnancy. No, you are shown only the pleasant, the enticing, because someone loves to make money by destroying your health. Recently, multi-million dollar lawsuits have been filed against the tobacco companies for destroying the health of a great many people. But still, people continue to smoke.

How typical this is of Satan! He goes about as an angel of light. He has all sorts of clever lies to cause you to forget God, your heavenly Father who truly loves you and wants only that which is really good and happy and joyous for you. But God says, live for Me and I will add to you such joy, peace and happiness that you will not be able to contain it all, but will want to share it with your best friends and all yourrelatives. Satan says, live as you please and I will show you fun and partying  while under his breath, he is really saying, “Come on, sucker!”

The wages of Satan’s playtoys, all sin, is death. Maybe not right this minute, but soon enough. Often that death follows agonizing pain, such as those dying of cancer or AIDS suffer. He knows mankind was created in the likeness and image of God to glorify Him, so anything he can do to tarnish or destroy the beauty of that reflection, gives him great delight.

The Bible says that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and as such, each of us has the responsibility to take the best possible care of our bodies. When you realize the deadly poisons tobacco and its by-products contain, it makes sense to avoid using it. But nicotine is also very addictive. People’s bodies reach a point in which it is so accustomed to adjusting to the intake of the poison that a person who suddenly tries to stop may develop extreme nervous shakes and suffer severe withdrawal consequences. Often the price-tag for quitting is so high that the person gives up and returns to the poisonous addiction. Many prople try to quit dozens of times and keep returning, eventually to die of emphysema, cancer, hardening of the arteries or some other disease related to the poisons of nicotine or other by-products of smoking. Many disease related to the poisons of nicotine or other by-products of smoking. Many medications and skin patches are now marketed to help those who want to quit and still they either cannot quit smoking, or do so with great difficulty because they realize the deadly results of continued tobacco usage.

So is there no other way to restore most, if not all your health? I thought you’d never ask. Yes, there is one very effective way. The Bible, our Manufacturer’s Directions, gives the answer. “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call,” (Acts 2:38,39). “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved,” (Acts 4:12). “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that Grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?

“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him in baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life,” (Romans 6:1-4). “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ,” (Galatians 3:27). “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new,”  (2 Corinthians 5:17).