You might be able to find someone who is as friendly as Mike Tillery, but you cannot find one who is friendlier. Mike was a friend’s friend. If you are unable to claim him as your friend, it is simply because you had not met him. Actually, I think it is fair to say that he was your friend even if you did not know him.
Mike passed away. Two years and four months before, he was told he had lung cancer. Mike underwent four chemotherapy treatments–the inducing of chemicals to poison cancer cells (but ask anyone who has gone through it, you physically pay a heavy price). He then had one-half of a lung removed by chest surgery. This was followed by two more chemotherapies. Mike then began to have seizures–the lung cancer had spread to his brain. He received ten radiation treatments on his brain and fifty radiation treatments on his lungs–an attempt to burn the cancer cells (but such a procedure comes with the possibility of producing serious and permanent damage to other parts of the body if they too are burned). The radiation on his brain did not work; the tumors continued to grow. Mike underwent brain surgery. The tumors were removed. Yet, more came back. There was a second surgery. They came back. A third surgery. Again they returned. Then, a fourth surgery was scheduled.
As Mike left this world, because he was such a good friend, he sought our best by urging his fellowman to quit doing the very thing which he had done that led him into all these nightmare medical difficulties of health–”Stop smoking!”
Years ago, when many began smoking, the health hazards of smoking were unknown. It was begun, often, in innocence. But now we know. Smoking is hazardous to a person’s health. Consider just a few statements issued by the American Cancer Society:
- “Smoking cigarettes has been identified by official commissions and scientific studies in many countries (Denmark, France, Australia, Finland, Sweden, Holland, Canada, the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand) as the cause of the enormous rise in the incidence of lung cancer in those countries since World War II, a rise so steep that it has been characterized as an epidemic.”
- “Tobacco smoking causes, or is strongly associated with, besides lung cancer, cancers of the larynx, mouth, esophagus, and urinary bladder.”
- “Cigarette smoking causes a higher death rate from circulatory diseases, heart attacks and strokes; and contributes to more than 188,000 excess deaths from these diseases each year in the Unites States.”
- “Cigarette smoking is the most important cause of chronic obstructive broncho-pulmonary disease in the United States.”
Such is why the Surgeon General went from the old hesitant warning of many years ago: “Cigarette Smoking May Be Dangerous To Your Health”; to today’s bold statement of conclusive certainty: “Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy.”
When a man chooses to become a preacher, he does so because he wants to help people know the Will of God. Thus, he is a friend, not an enemy (Gal. 4:16). As a friend, it is pointed out that God’s Will declares that our bodies belong to God (1 Cor. 6:19-20). Thus, we have not the right to destroy the body with tobacco (as we have now discovered it does).
The passage also teaches that we are to “glorify God in your body.” How can a Christian give glory to God with his body in the eyes of non-Christians when those onlookers today know so well what smoking does to the human body?
Your friends: Mike, medicine and this minister, plead with all who smoke to stop. With the help of various non-prescription methods, and with the help of God [“I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me” (Phil 4:13)] you can do it!
Gary Henson