We’re going to address the subject of gambling, the seductive dream. We feel a little bit more like an investigative reporter than a Bible teacher. This may sound a little more like a 20/20 television documentary than a sermon. And we don’t very often do this, but we want to share with you something of the scene and how gambling fits into our culture today so that we have some grasp of the importance of understanding what the Word of God has to say which can be applied to this very, very important issue.

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America is on a gambling binge. It is the new invisible addiction assaulting millions of people in our country and around the world. The lottery has become the number one American fantasy. Estimates of the total amount wagered are very difficult to come to it. It’s hard to be exactly accurate. We do know that there is about $500 billion wagered every year legally in America, and estimates up to $1 trillion totally when you add the illegal gambling. The best statistics indicate that there are about 10 million compulsive gamblers – and that’s more than the number of alcoholics.

 

America is fast becoming a land of gamblers, and not only legal gambling, but illegal gambling makes the actual effect and impact of this thing almost incalculable.
Lest you think that’s something new, it isn’t. We like to look back at the foundations of our country and assume that everything is as it ought to have been in the early Christian beginnings of America. But gambling, in fact, played a very prominent role in early American history.

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When Columbus came over here and discovered America, his little boats were filled with sailors who gambled away much of their time crossing the Atlantic by playing dice and playing cards. In landing here, they therefore brought their gambling interest with them, and it took root in the new nation. In 1612, the British government ran a lottery to assist the new settlement at Jamestown, Virginia.

 

And the father of our country, George Washington, wisely declared – quote – “Gambling is the child of avarice” – or greed – “the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief.” End quote. And we certainly agree with George. However, he himself kept a full diary of his own winnings and losses. In 1776, the first Continental Congress of the United States, sold lottery tickets to finance the American Revolution. President Washington himself bought the first lottery ticket to build the new capital called Federal City, now known as Washington, D.C. So, our nation was founded on a lottery. The revolution was financed by a lottery, and our capital city was financed by a lottery.

 

From 1790 to 1860, 24 of the 36 states sponsored government-run lotteries. Many schools, universities, colleges, hundreds of churches conducted their own lotteries to raise funds for their own buildings.

 

Now, through this period of early American history and involvement with lotteries and governmentsponsored gambling, the voice of the church was somewhat uncertain. The church, early on, was becoming liberal. There were liberal elements that supported these lotteries and this gambling. The Catholic Church, to this very day, has had an uninterrupted interest in gambling and in lotteries to finance its operations.

 

But the early church also had some detractors. There were some among the Puritans and some among the Quakers. Even the Baptists and the Methodists, who tended to be the evangelicals, took up, as it were, verbal arms against this government-sponsored gambling. Cotton Mather, one of the early American Puritan preachers, preached against gambling as the denial of the providential control of God. And Puritans and Quakers generally followed, and echoing his very message garnered a hearing in places. Yet the professor of ethics - of all subjects - at Harvard College, William Ames, defended gambling. In fact, Harvard financed the erection of its building by a lottery, and the University of Pennsylvania raised its operational budget through gambling.

 

There was a protest by none other than Francis Scott Key, who was the author of our national anthem. He was one of the great laymen of the church of his day, was a member of the American Episcopal Church. He was evangelical in his convictions, and he introduced a resolution to the General Convention of 1817, calling on that body to condemn gambling as inconsistent with Christian sobriety, dangerous to the morals of the members of the church, and peculiarly unbecoming to the character of Christians. But the Episcopalian Church declared his resolution unnecessary. The church struggled a little bit in dealing with gambling because they couldn’t point to a verse that said, “Thus saith the Lord, ‘Thou shalt not gamble.’” But they did denounce it as socially harmful and inconsistent with the biblical view of God and with the Christian’s understanding of good stewardship.
Methodists and Baptists, Puritans and Quakers began some evangelical activism and began to
attack this government-sponsored gambling. Under this attack and because of the increasing corruption of the gambling, by 1894 it had disappeared from America. By 1894, there was no more government-sponsored gambling. It ended in corruption and in a financial fiasco. And public gambling at any level was stopped cold at that time, because John Wanamker - who was famous for the department store in Philadelphia, but was quite a noble Christian - was the Post Master General of the United States and an evangelical, and he
barred – quote – “All letters, parcels, postcards, circulars, lists of drawings, tickets, and other materials referring to lotteries from the mail.” And so, gambling came to a halt in 1894.

 

And between 1894 and 1964, there was no government-sponsored gambling in America. In 1964, it was reintroduced by the state of New Hampshire, which became the first state to offer a lottery. And now there are 37 states that have government-sponsored lotteries, and the Washington, D.C. makes 38 entities. There are over 500 casinos across the nation, mostly on Indian reservation land where the government allows them to just about do anything they want to do tax free as reparations for early American encroachment into the West as settlers came and battled against the Indians – the Native Americans.

 

In 1974, this ten years later, a Gallup Poll indicated 61 percent of Americans gambled, wagering $47.4 billion annually. In 1989, 71 percent were wagering $246 billion. In 1992, $330 billion was being wagered. By 1995, studies indicate 95 percent of Americans gamble, 82 percent play the lottery, 75 percent play slot machines, 50 percent bet on dogs and horses, 44 percent on cards, 34 percent on bingo, 26 percent – that’s better than 1 out of 4 – on sporting events, 74 percent frequented casinos, and 89 percent approved of gambling. That means there were 6 percent who didn’t approve but gambled anyway. Interesting.

 

Well, a lot of us don’t approve of everything we do, is that not true? This area of legalized gambling has paralleled the general trend in America toward permissiveness, sex, pornography, drugs, and materialism. It’s just kind of ridden the crest of that same wave. No longer is gambling confined to Las Vegas, and no longer even to Las Vegas and Atlantic City. It is the national addiction; it is everywhere across this country. Most of the casinos can now be built in various land which was once reservation land and therefore is outside the purview of general national law.

 

Gambling expenditures each year exceed the amount spent on films, books, amusements, music entertainment combined. People spend more money gambling than they do buying tickets to all national athletic events put together – baseball, football, everything else. In 1993, people spent $400 billion – that’s legal – and it’s at least that much again, if not more, illegally. They spent $400 billion in 1993 legally, $482 billion in 1994. And now it’s exceeded that. It’s well over $500 billion. Five billion is spent every year just in the slot machines in Nevada alone. Ninety-two million households visit the casinos, and ten percent of all money earned by people in America is thrown away in gambling.

 

And frankly, the future is very bright for the gambling industry, because they’re now adding to their casinos theme parks with the singular goal of attracting children so they can turn them into gamblers at the earliest possible age. And that is a very successful operation. They want to make your little children gamblers. Ninety percent of today’s teenagers have gambled. So, that’s how successful they have been at this. College students are up to eight times more likely to develop gambling addiction than their parents because they have been susceptible to this tremendous escalation in state-run lotteries, development of casinos in the last few years. And this attempt to draw them in.

 

People earning less than $10,000.00 annually buy more lottery tickets than any other income group. And gambling is linked to organized crime at every level. In speaking with an LAPD officer in the vice area here, who had been there for over 25 years, with special assignment to gambling, he told us some very interesting things about gambling in our own city – illegal gambling – which goes on at a far greater pace than any of us would ever imagine. Some of you, no doubt, in an audience this size, are involved in this. The money earned by those who operate the gambling business is largely laundered through pornography and prostitution.
 

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