“They shall say to the elders, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.” – Deuteronomy 21:20-21
Farouk I, the last king of Egypt, came to the throne as a sixteen-year-old in 1936 and was deposed in a coup led by Gamal Nasser in 1952.
At first, the teenage king enjoyed his great popularity. But Farouk soon began to shirk his duties. He lived a life of luxury and gluttonous indulgence.
In 1950, he went to France for a two-month-long bachelor party. Farouk's biographer, William Stadiem, wrote about how the king "...went on the most excessively lavish, self-indulgent bachelor party in the annals of sybaritism”.
The effects of the king’s reckless lifestyle were captured in side-by-side photos published after his exile. The first showed an elegantly slender young king walking beside a swimming pool. The second photo, also taken as Farouk strode beside a pool, showed a man so enormous he was scarcely recognizable.
The Lord warns us to refrain from reckless living. Today in prayer, give consideration to how you are living your life and give your life fully to Jesus.
“Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today -- gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
God’s Word: “Hear, my son, and be wise, and direct your heart in the way. Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags.” – Proverbs 23:19-21
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