Mel Trotter, the famous rescue mission worker, was the son of a bartender who “drank as much as he served.” Trotter followed in his father’s footsteps, losing job after job because of his addiction to drinking and gambling. Each time he lost a job, he promised to reform and start doing better, but each time he failed. After the death of his baby son, Trotter made his way to Chicago where he intended to drown himself in Lake Michigan. He had sold his shoes to get money for another drink, and was walking barefoot through the snow toward his death when he went inside the Pacific Garden Mission and was saved. For the next forty years, Trotter did everything he could to help those like himself who had fallen prey to the deceptively alluring temptations of sin.
Satan’s advertising is never realistic. He paints beautiful pictures of immediate pleasure, ignoring the real consequences that its participants must endure. If the beer companies ran ads filled with crashed cars, paralyzed drinkers, and the tiny caskets of babies killed by drunk drivers, it would not help them sell their product. So they focus on the beginning rather than the ending. But no matter how beautiful the temptation appears, it is only a cloak for the reality that sin always ends in pain and heartbreak and judgment. As James said, “…sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:15).