The Drinker Not Excusable—While intoxicated, every degree of crime has been committed, and yet the perpetrators have been excused in many instances, because they knew not what they were doing. This does not lessen the guilt of the criminal. If by his own hand he puts the glass to his lips, and deliberately takes that which he knows will destroy his reasoning faculties, he becomes responsible for all the injury he does while intoxicated, at the very moment he lets his appetite control him, and he barters away his reasoning faculties for intoxicating drinks. It was his own act which brought him even below the brutes, and crimes committed when he is in a state of intoxication should be punished as severely as though the person had all the power of his reasoning faculties.—Spiritual Gifts 4a:125. (Te 25.1) MC VC

Drunkenness and Crime Before the Flood and Now—The evils that are so apparent at the present time, are the same that brought destruction to the antediluvian world. “In the days that were before the Flood” one of the prevailing sins was drunkenness. From the record in Genesis we learn that “the earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” Genesis 6:11. Crime reigned supreme; life itself was unsafe. Men whose reason was dethroned by intoxicating drink, thought little of taking the life of a human being. (Te 25.2) MC VC

“As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” Luke 17:26. The drunkenness and the crime that now prevail, have been foretold by the Saviour Himself. We are living in the closing days of this earth’s history. It is a most solemn time. Everything betokens the soon return of our Lord.—The Review and Herald, October 25, 1906. (Te 25.3) MC VC