walks of life. Today illustrations are freely used in the publications of Jehovah’s witnesses. Notice them in the book From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained and how they assist the reader to appreciate more fully the printed information.

LIVING WHAT YOU READ

24-30. What points illustrated in Judges 6-8 stick in your mind, helping you to remember this account and to gain in knowledge of Jehovah?

²⁴ Having a fertile mind well cultivated now by these principles, we can launch off into a most captivating feast of Jehovah’s Word. To get the most out of the pictures unfolding before us we visualize mentally the happenings involved in the event. With Judges chapters 6-8, come with us into the past when judges ruled Israel and we will join ourselves to a farmer called Gideon. He has just been visited by Jehovah’s angel, who proves that Gideon has been chosen to save the Israelites from the Midianites. We are soon caught up in a chain of fast-moving happenings. In the night down comes the altar of Baal and up goes the altar of Jehovah, sending the city fathers looking for the blood of Gideon. You hear Gideon’s father send them on their way, with a challenge to their god Baal. Gideon’s messengers bring together 32,000 men, and now with two more signs from God that erase any doubts from Gideon’s mind we march to the well of Harod, under five miles from the massive camp of marauding Midianites in the Valley of Jezreel.

²⁵ But now you can hardly believe your eyes. Gideon is doing what Jehovah long ago commanded the army officers to do. “The officers must . . . say, ‘Who is the man that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return to his house, that he may not cause the hearts of his brothers to melt as his own heart.’” (Deut. 20:8) Does your heart nearly melt when you learn 22,000 men go home? What will be done, for the Midianites are like insects for numbers, and what if they should know of Gideon’s plan and the size of his army now reduced to 10,000?

²⁶ Now they are led to water. They stop to drink! A few quickly scoop a handful of water to their mouth and almost immediately these are separated to one side to make just 300 in all. The 9,700 that went down on their knees to drink water are being sent home! You remember the angel’s words to Gideon: “You will certainly strike down Midian as if one man.” (Judg. 6:16) But with so few? No wonder this place, the name of the well of Harod, means “trembling.”

²⁷ Consider yourself now as one of the three hundred. You conclude now that if we win it will be by Jehovah’s power, not ours, and we do well to follow his instructions through Gideon without any more anxieties. You now have the point that Jehovah is emphasizing to all present and future generations: follow instructions.

²⁸ Night falls, Gideon scouts the enemy camp and is made strong by what he hears. He returns soon and organizes the 300 into three bands. Each man receives the strangest fighting equipment: trumpets, and torches in large opaque jars. Gideon teaches us how to use them and reveals the signal.

²⁹ And now we start, at midnight; the darkness crowding in like a wall deadens the sounds of moving men. Suppose some one falls in the dark and awakens the enemy, or someone overly anxious does not wait for Gideon’s signal, but independently runs ahead of Jehovah’s arrangements. It is a tense time, you feel it in your bones; seconds seem like hours. You draw near, you can hear muffled voices of the enemy as they post sentries for the midnight watch. The camp sleeps. And then, three hundred and one resonant trumpets join in sonorous blast, three hundred and one water jars are smashed, three hundred and one torches are held high as three hundred and one male voices thunder out “Jehovah’s sword and Gideon’s!”

³⁰ The Midianite camp breaks into destructive panic. The camp that was as the sand of the sea turns to a running disorderly mass. They turn on each other, killing in mad confusion. Blind flight takes them mile after mile over rugged territory, with one hundred and twenty thousand men killed by their own fellows and by the other Israelites that Gideon called to bottle up the way to escape at the crossing places at the Jordan.

31. (a) How can we file material to be remembered for future use? (b) But what really is the most essential point to be kept in mind?

³¹ It is a sight you will never forget. So you will not forget if you live what you read while you study. Use all your senses. Use description to create a picture. Stir up your imagination. Be a part of the event. Taste the food. Drive the horses. Climb the rocks. Blow the trumpets. Walk in the damp grass. Feel the occasion; get the sense of it. And while you do all of this, apply the counsel given to yourself. If you print on your mind the reasons for the actions taken and how Jehovah’s name and will are involved you will recall this knowledge readily for use. Notice how long remembered Gideon’s actions are in the Bible, and, more importantly, that Jehovah was the one that brought the victory.—1 Sam. 12:11; Ps. 83:9, 11; Isa. 9:4; 10:26; Heb. 11:32.

Add to Your Knowledge Every Day

1. Contrast the growth of one gaining wisdom of men with that from God’s Word.

MANY persons balk at making new Scriptural ideas their own, no doubt because they will have to give up old ideas that are not in line with Bible truth. If we cling to man-made wisdom in preference to God’s teaching, we will grow but it will be in pride, followed quickly by envy, strife, suspicion, and our easily disturbed mind will be a very unhealthy one. (1 Tim. 6:3-5) Great happiness comes from changing our personality and from experiencing the replacing of old selfish ideas with solid Bible principles. (Eph. 4:22-24) You will be able to look back and compare your former thinking and its unreasonableness with the truth and the logic that you now have to use in understanding fine details of the great panoramic picture recorded in the Bible.

2, 3. While it is necessary to stop in study to look up cited scriptures and to go to the dictionary or other helps, what must we avoid?

² To accomplish the most in the time you have requires that you stick to the subject under study. If we were to look up the meaning of a word in the dictionary and then read the definitions of all the other words listed there, we would not gain the desired information from our study. Get the idea that is the theme and fit all the relative details into place to support that idea. Otherwise your knowledge will be like the unfinished picture puzzle, limited to just little patches of scenes that