DRUGS AND ADDICTION IN THE BIBLE

DRUGS AND ADDICTION IN THE BIBLE

 

The Bible uses the Grk. word pharmakos which we get the word pharmacy. Rev. 22:15 where we learn that no one who practices this sin will enter God's Kingdom. They are left outside the city: "For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie."

America has over the years taken a fast pace towards this sin and it has been hidden from the eyes of the adults and kids in the last two to three generations. The TV has helped blossom this trend through the commercials that populate the screen. In the 50's and 60's the commercials have went from Vitalis to Viagra. The GM commercials in that day boasted of a Chevrolet dealership on every corner of America. That is no longer true and what has replaced those dealerships are not 1, not 2, but 3 drug stores. When I was a child if you didn't feel good you were sent outside to work off your ailment. Today the kids see their parents take a pill. And when that child gets older and he certainly has many feelings that are not classified as good, he takes a pill sold by a dealer in his own school system. The trend is so advanced that today they are proposing to educate kids from K-12 on drug education. Training a fallen child from his earliest days on drugs and their usage and see where that will end.
Every program on TV now has drugs to solve all these health issues that people have encountered. They are led to self-medicate or ask their doctors to prescribe this wonder drug that has more side effects that what they are encountering before this supposed miracle remedy.

What the Bible has to say on the subject of drugs, for although this word does not appear in the Standard Concordances, it is in fact present in the original Greek in several places in the New Testament. In order to understand the full significance of the interpretation placed on the use of drugs, the writers of the New Testament let us first read in full the verses in which the word appears before discovering its semantic derivation. The verses, in their order of appearance in the New Testament, are:

     1) "Now the works of the flesh are these: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told in times past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." (Gal. 5:19-21)

     2) "Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts." (Rev. 9:21)

     3) "And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee; for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived." (Rev. 18:23)

     4) "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable and murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars; shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." (Rev. 21:8) 

     "For without are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers, and idolaters and whosovever loveth and maketh a lie." (Rev. 22:15)

     Parenthetically, it is important to keep in mind that the writer of Revelations was speaking of a future time. When we read the foregoing five verses in context, as they appear in the Books of Gal. and Rev., the entire circumstances therein described seem to be speaking prophetically of the very age in which we find ourselves today.

 Readers of the Books of Gal. and Rev. in the original Greek would never find the words, witchcraft, sorceries, or sorcery. The word is, again, a translator's interpretation of a meaning which was very likely accurate enough in the day in which it was translated, but it is inappropriate in our era. Notably, in every other place in the New Testament where these words appear in English, the true Greek equivalent for "witchcraft," "sorcery," or "sorcerer" is used. But, in the original Greek, we find the word Pharmakon in Rev. 9:21, and not the word "sorceries." The literal meaning of the Greek word is "a drug, i.e. spell-giving potion," according to Strong's Concordance. Similarly, in Rev. 18:21, the Greek word is Pharmakeia which would correctly be translated "druggery." The Greek word in Rev. 21:8 is pharmakeus, the literal translation for which is "druggers," and the original Greek for the word found in Rev. 22:15 is pharmakos, meaning "pharmacist" or “drugger." The Greek word in Gal. 5:20 was also pharmakeia—“druggery”. In addition to Strong, whose Concordance has been known as an unimpeachable source since 1890, we find such others as the renowned Greek scholars, B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort, who wrote a Greek interlinear translation in 1881 in which the literal English translations of the Greek words were set forth immediately below the original Greek and who give the correct literal meaning of the these Greek words, as above.