DO 2395 10/86

"LEST THOU DASH THY FOOT!"

1. Psalm 91, Verse 11 and 12: "For He shall give His Angels charge over thee‚ to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." How can you dash your foot against a stone? Did you ever stub your toe? I keep stubbing my toe on Mama's chair, because the arms don't come out as far as the feet. The chair feet interfere with my feet and I keep banging my toes on it! That doesn't mean the Angel is failing in his duty, that just means it's a good lesson for me to learn to pull in my feet and look where I'm going!—Like the guy who was window shopping.

2. Do you know what window-shopping is? You just go by the stores looking at everything in the windows and you don't buy anything! It's a real cheap way to go shopping! So he was just walking along looking in the windows when suddenly he bumped into a girl. He turned around and said to her, "Why don't you look where you're going!" And she said, "Yeah, but why don't you go where you're lookin'!" So I'm not always careful about looking where I'm going, or going where I'm looking, and I end up stubbing my toe! I used to stub my toe on the corner of the bathroom wall in the last house we lived in, because I miscalculated how far the corner stuck out and how big my feet are!

3. It's got to be pretty serious to dash your foot! That wouldn't be just stubbing your toe. Stubbing your toe is a good lesson you can learn, to watch where you're going and go where you're looking, and try to keep your toes out of trouble! But if you were really going to bang your foot so hard on a stone that you really dashed it or broke it or smashed it, then the Angel is going to pick you up and make sure you don't get hurt that way, so you won't dash your foot.

4. (Techi: What does "dash" mean?) Well‚ I could illustrate it for you here with my Bible, but I don't want to bust it by throwing it down on the ground real hard! To dash it down on something is kind of like smash it. Dash it is like smash it! When you dash it, you dash it and smash it at the same time, only dash usually means you do it faster. You can smash it without going too fast, but when you dash, you go fast! We know that, because there's a race that the foot-runners run in athletics called the 100-yard dash in which they run real fast!

5. I can remember one time when Techi was running real fast in the back yard and she dashed her knee on the pavement, remember that? That's dashing! When you're dashing too fast, you're apt to dash your foot against a stone or your knee against the pavement, or your elbow, like I apparently did yesterday. It's not serious, it's just a little scratch, but those scratches can really hurt if you keep having something rub on it‚ like my sleeve. The material or the cloth rubbing on it aggravates it and it can even get infected and get real sore.

WINDOW SHOPPING!

6. (Techi: I don't understand the purpose of window shopping!)—Ha! Well, every Saturday night when I was a boy‚ my Mother and I would go window shopping. The stores were closed and the people were all gone and downtown was pretty quiet, but they'd leave the lights on in the windows as long as possible showing all the clothing, the different styles and all kinds of things.

7. The stores stayed open extra late on Saturday night! Usually on the other nights the stores only stayed open till six o'clock‚ and Sundays they closed them almost entirely when I was a boy. Nowadays, Sunday is the biggest shopping day in America, they have all kinds of big supermarkets open all day long on Sunday! But it used to be that they closed up all the stores on Sunday so everybody could have a day of rest and go to church!

8. Saturday night was the last night that people had a chance to go shopping before the stores closed on Sunday. All the farmers and all the villagers from outside the city came to town, because the little villages didn't have many places to shop. So Saturday was market day and they all came to the big city on Saturday and usually spent all day there. They could come in and sell their produce or their animals or whatever they raised, get money for them and go shopping before they went home late Saturday night. So the stores would stay open late on Saturday night till nine o'clock to accommodate all these throngs and multitudes of Saturday shoppers!

9. The stores would close at nine, and most people had already shopped and gone home for their Saturday night bath before Sunday morning church, but there would be some people, like us‚ who'd go downtown window shopping. My Mama often said it saved a lot of money! They called it window shopping because they left the lights on in the windows till 10 or 11 o'clock for the very purpose of appealing to the late-night window shoppers who came late and could look in the store windows to see what they would like or want and maybe come back on Monday to buy it.

10. You couldn't buy anything‚ but you could look!—Look but not touch, look but not buy!—See?—And that way you saved a lot of money! Maybe by Monday you forgot what you saw and you didn't have time to go buy it, but at least you had the pleasure of just looking at all the pretty things in the windows! Of course‚ that's something you kids haven't had much experience at because our dear shoppers do most of our shopping for us. They have to run around town and shop for us, so we don't even have to shop. They just bring us what we want and need‚ right? So you ought to be very thankful that you don't have to run around on the dirty streets looking in the windows to see who's got what and what sales are on. On Saturdays they had a lot of sales on things that they didn't want to keep over the weekend, because business was kind of slow during business and work days.

THE SYSTEM'S BLUE MONDAY‚WE ENJOY OUR WORK!

11. When I was young they used to call Monday "Blue Monday"! That was always considered a sad day, a blue day, because everybody had to go back to work and back to school. The kids didn't like going to school and most of the workers didn't like going to work. That's the way the System is, they lead a pretty sad life and have to do a lot of things they don't like to do. They don't live like us where everything we do we like to do!—We either like to do it for ourselves or others or the Family or for the Lord!

12. We like what we do! We really like it and we enjoy our work! Mama enjoys her work, she just shines and absolutely bubbles when she's all excited about something she's doing, writing a new article or promoting a new Teen Camp or whatever she's doing! And I get all excited and steamed up when I'm talking to you or dictating Letters or even reading them over when I'm editing them and polishing them up, correcting all the mistakes, etc. I get excited and thrilled with the Word of God! I get so excited, I get all warmed up and I want to open the windows and Mama's freezing!

13. We like our work, so we don't call it Blue Monday! I even look forward to Monday when we can go back to work on our work, or even some of our gardening and repair and maintenance work and things like that! We enjoy our work! In fact, some of our people like their work so well, it's hard to get them to stop come night time! About the only thing that can stop them is the darkness! I have a hard time chasing our handyman out of the work he's doing, he wants to stay on and on until it's almost dark, because we all enjoy our work!

14. But the System's work is dull, boring‚ hard and uninteresting! They're not accomplishing much and they don't know where they're going or why! About the only thing that really cheers them up is if they make any money. That's why Friday is considered their happiest day of the week, because that's usually when they get their paychecks! Then an even happier day for them is Saturday when they can go out and spend it, which is what they work for all week! They have to work at all those hard, dull, uninteresting jobs that they don't even like, just so they can get the money!

15. They get their paycheck Friday evening and usually they go "out on the town‚" as they say, on Friday nights. They go out to a movie or a dance or a party or have fun of some kind. Some of them go out and get drunk on Friday nights. When I was young they couldn't do it on Saturday nights because most people had to go to church on Sunday morning. When I'd complain about having to take a bath Saturday night or study my lessons for Sunday School, my Father used to say: "Son, Sunday morning begins on Saturday night!" That was his favourite Saturday night saying! So all the church people, which were most people in those days, had to get ready Saturday nights for Sunday morning!—Get all cleaned up and bathed and study their Sunday School lesson and get all ready to get up bright and early Sunday morning, because you had to get to church about 9 o'clock for Sunday School.

16. So Saturday night was a tough night! Taking a bath was a big job in those days, because it was cold water and we had to heat the water in a kettle on the stove. And you didn't get to sleep in on Sunday mornings. After going to school all week or working hard at some System job that some people did all week, you felt like sleeping in all weekend! But instead of that, they wanted so much to enjoy their paycheck they'd stay out half of Friday night or maybe all night Friday partying or going to movies or shows or having fun and things like that!

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS!

17. So that's what window-shopping is, and people would do that on Saturday nights while the streets and the windows were still brightly lit. Especially around Christmas time the stores wanted everybody to be tempted to buy things‚ so they had lots of pretty exhibits in the windows.

18. In those days, every store had a manger scene in the window and they put up Christmas decorations all over the wires of the street lights and hanging over the streets, big beautiful decorations! Until finally Miami got so Jewish that the Jewish City Council decided they shouldn't spend money on "religious decorations," as they called them, celebrating a religious holiday. That was not a separation of church and state! According to the American Constitution you're supposed to separate the church from the state, religion from the government. So they voted not to decorate the streets of Miami at Christmas time because they said it would save $93,000 in Christmas decorations.

19. But one big rich Jewish businessman who ran a department store said, "Well, if you guys aren't going to pay for them‚ I will‚ because I want my children to see them! Half the fun of Christmas is going downtown to see all the Christmas decorations!" (Maria: It increases the sales too!) Yes‚ because when all the people go downtown to see the decorations, they also see those brightly lit windows and all those juicy things in the windows, new clothes and new toys and things they want to buy. The Christmas decorations are sort of a bait to lure them downtown‚ and then they look in the windows, and then they go in and buy things and spend more money than they've got!—Especially in recent days when they can buy things on credit: Buy now, pay later!

20. They've even got airlines that advertise: "Fly now—pay later!" Meaning they can buy their airplane ticket with a credit card, or if they don't have a credit card, they just sign a little contract that they're going to pay for it later. They pay a little bit now, and then they have to pay the rest in installment payments later. They used to call them "easy payments" when I was a kid. Finally they got to be not so easy because people began buying so much stuff they couldn't even pay for it!

21. But anyway, that Jewish businessman was pretty smart! He knew that if they put up the decorations it would lure a lot of people downtown. Just like a moth flies around the flame of a candle lured by the light, and by and by, if the dear moth gets too close, he flies right into the flame and gets burned! So the shoppers would come downtown and fly all around lured by the lights, and finally they would fly too close into the door of the store and buy something and get burned! (Maria: That's true! Grandpa said that for us it's a temptation that we shouldn't put in our way. It's like working for Mammon and wanting to have things that you don't need.)

22. But my Mother was quite self-righteous about going downtown on Saturday night after the stores closed. She figured that it wasn't any sin to at least look at it and enjoy looking at it and wanting it, as long as she didn't waste money buying it! So if we hadn't already been to town Saturday afternoon, we all went downtown window shopping Saturday night.

23. I used to go downtown to do my shopping with the few pennies I'd earned during the week. I was a pretty smart boy and I would go to every store downtown that had that same thing and price it in every store before I would buy it, so I was sure I always got the best bargain! In other words‚ I got the same thing at the lowest price. I was a very good shopper in my day!

THE XMAS SPIRIT!

24. (Maria: At Christmas, however, you don't think that shopping is so good for children.) (See No.1063.) It depends on what kind of Christmas spirit you've got! There's a good Christmas spirit to want to celebrate the Lord's Birthday and be a testimony and witness by having manger scenes‚ etc., and that's good. I think it's good for the World to have to celebrate the Lord's Birthday. At least they remember Jesus once a year, which is better than not at all!

25. But there's another kind of Christmas spirit that even the Jewish merchants promote, which has gotten more Christmasy all the time, and it's become Xmas! They've left Christ out of Christmas and they've got Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus and everything in the World that has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus and His Birthday! They still want to put up decorations, but nothing about Jesus any more, just crazy decorations of reindeer and Santa Claus to get people into the Xmas spirit of going downtown to buy buy buy things, all kinds of useless Christmas presents, and spend too much money, more than they can afford to spend!

26. So how in the World did we ever get onto all that just from the Scripture about "dashing your foot against a stone"? (Techi: Oh‚ I know! Because the man was walking downtown and he bumped into somebody!) Yes, good for you, you got the connection! My trains of thought sometimes wander off on sidetracks into little villages that we didn't expect to go to!—Wandering trains! We used to have a little story about "The Train That Got Lost" when I was a little kid, but don't ask me about that because I don't remember! All I remember is that the little train was wandering around and it got lost, and the book had cute little pictures of the cute little train!

WHAT'S A "DASH"?

27. We got an awful lot out of the word "dash," didn't we? A dash can result in a smash! But a dash is not always a smash. You can have a 100-yard dash‚ which can mean a race, so "dash" can mean running real fast! "I dashed downtown!" Our shoppers do a lot of dashing! They dash around town all day when they go shopping. It means to run around real fast! But it doesn't always mean that you bump into something or hurt yourself.

28. A lot of English words have several different meanings. Dash means going fast, running a race, but it also means the result of running so fast that you run into something, you dash yourself against something and go smash! Then dash results in smash! Get it? PTL! We sure got a lot out of that 12th Verse!

"TREAD UPON THE ADDER!"

29. (Verse 13:) "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: The young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet." Tread upon a lion? Well, I can understand walking on an adder, that's a small poisonous snake, about a foot or a foot-and-a-half long, the same kind of snake that Cleopatra had in her basket of figs she asked a servant for after she was about to get captured. She didn't want to get captured, so that was her way of committing suicide—she let the adders crawl out and sink their venomous fangs into her arms so that she died right away! You can die real quick from a bad poisonous snake bite, so watch out for snakes! Stay out of the grass and away from rocks where they could be hiding.

30. (Techi: How did she know that there were adders in the basket?) Because she had asked the servant to prepare it ahead of time. (Techi: Why?) Because she didn't want to fall into the hands of her enemies‚ she'd rather die. (Techi: But did the servant know?) Yes, the servant knew that that's what she was trying to do.

31. We heard about one woman who found a great big python, a boa constrictor in her attic! When she saw it one day she was terrified and came running to her neighbour to ask him what to do about it, how to kill it! He said, "I'd be happy to have a python in my attic! If you don't want it‚ I'll be glad to have it!"—Because they eat rats and mice and they kill other snakes and they're not poisonous. (David: But they are very strong.) Yes, and if they run out of other food they might just decide to wrap themselves around you!

32. Pythons can kill things as big as pigs, and even people! They're sometimes 18 or 20 feet long‚ and the way they kill their prey, they don't just bite'm and poison them, they're not poisonous, but they wrap themselves around in a coil and tighten the coil, and tighten the coil, and tighten the coil until they flatten the pig, flatten the pig, flatten the pig! They squash him all up in a nice soft jelly mass so that then they can swallow the whole thing! It's easier to swallow a squashed pig than a whole pig! So if you don't like pigs, rats and mice‚ etc., keep yourself a nice big boa constrictor, but make sure he gets plenty to eat so he doesn't decide to eat you!

33. So the Lord's promised us that we can tread on adders and snakes and things like that. That sounds pretty easy, although it's dangerous, because they might just turn around and bite you, like what happened to your Uncle Aaron one time. Thank God he had on his cowboy boots! He was jumping across a ditch without looking and he didn't see this big six-foot rattlesnake there and he jumped right on top of it with both feet, and the rattler came around and grabbed him by the boot! But thank God, his boots were real thick leather, and that's why cowboys wear boots, to protect themselves from snakes, and also from brambles and bushes which they ride through with their horses, so they don't get scratched and cut up by the thorns. That's also why they wear chaps‚ those big leather overalls that they wear on each leg. That way they can ride through the brush and not get all scratched up!

34. So Aaron landed on this rattlesnake and the rattlesnake bit his boot! Thank God the teeth didn't sink through and hit dear Aaron, and he immediately picked up a rock or a stick and killed him! Of course, sometimes we carried guns, so he might have had his gun with him and shot him.

GRANDPA THE COWBOY!

35. Did you know that Grandpa used to be a cowboy? Don't laugh, I was a cowboy once upon a time when we lived on the Ranch (TSC)! I wore a cowboy hat, cowboy shirt and a cowboy jacket, a big thick heavy leather jacket which I was very glad to have on one day when the horse bit me, a thoroughbred racehorse we had. Every time you'd turn your back on her when you were trying to saddle her she'd try to bite you!—Especially when you knelt down to tighten the cinch, that's the strap that goes around the horse's stomach to hold the saddle on tight. When you tighten that cinch it kind of hurts the horse a little bit—just when you tighten it‚ then you let go and it doesn't hurt—but every time I'd do that, she'd turn around and try to bite me! Thank God, this thick leather jacket I had on protected me so that it didn't hurt me, but I sure felt a squeeze!

36. A horse can bite! It doesn't have sharp teeth, but it's got strong teeth and it can hurt you when it bites! Of course, it can hurt you more with its hooves than anything else if they tromp on you! They used to train horses to go to battle, to stand up on their hind feet and beat the enemy with their front hooves!

37. I went out riding on the horse every day to go out to get the cattle! That's why they call them cowboys, because they go out on horses to get the cows, the cattle! Get it? Old Red, this one cow we had, was always leading the cattle astray off in the woods somewhere and I had to go out and round'm up! I'd usually go out with one of the boys‚ both of us on horses, and I always carried a sidegun, one of those big long-barreled pistols, because the short-barrels aren't very accurate. You see all these guys in the movies shooting all these shots, and the reason hardly anybody ever gets killed is because you can hardly hit anything with a pistol unless it's right next to you! You're doing good to even hit something as big as a barn door with a pistol, because pistols have a very short barrel, & therefore it's difficult to aim accurately!

38. But if you really want to shoot something accurately at a distance you use a rifle with a long barrel, because the bullet goes through that barrel‚ that long tube, in the direction it's supposed to go, so that when it leaves the mouth of the barrel it keeps going that way! But a pistol, those little snub-nosed revolvers, can hardly hit somebody across the room!

39. I had a long nine-gun! It was only a .22, which wasn't very powerful a bullet, but it carried more bullets. Sometimes it was better to have more bullets to keep shooting. I could pull the trigger nine times and fire every time. The big six-guns are usually .44, .45 or .38. Police usually carry .38's. Cowboys used to carry .44's and .45's and they are very powerful‚ they can bore a hole clear through and out‚ a big hole! (Editor: The .22 or .38‚ etc., is a measurement of the caliber of a gun, the width of the bullet it fires‚ in hundredths of an inch. A .22-caliber bullet is roughly .22 inches wide.)

40. My brother got out in the back yard one day with my Mother's old .44 revolver she used to carry as an Immigrations Officer.—That big revolver that she shot the Chinaman with one time, remember? (See KTK Book 2, Page 198.) My brother was a young teenager at the time and wasn't supposed to touch the gun‚ but he took it out in the backyard—the kids were all out there playing—and he decided he wanted to shoot it! So to show you how powerful it was, he pointed it at a tin can or something in the back yard, pulled the trigger, and it nearly knocked him down! It knocked his hand clear back over his shoulder! He didn't know how to hold a powerful gun like that!

41. That's why you see policemen in the movies holding those powerful guns with both hands, because that way the gun doesn't kick back so bad and they're more accurate. Because if a gun kicks your hand back, then instead of the bullet going straight out, it goes up thattaway!

42. So we always carried guns when we went out to round up the cattle and we were real cowboys! We wore cowboy hats and shirts and jackets and boots and jeans, and Aaron even had a pair of chaps he used to wear, because he was usually the round-up boy. I used to just go out for the fun of it because I loved the evening and the sunset and it was pretty. But I always carried a gun because you never knew what kind of rascals you were going to bump into! (David: Could a .22 kill a snake?) Oh yes! A .22 could kill most small game—snakes, rodents‚ even foxes. A .22 could even kill people if they get hit in the right place, or rather the wrong place!

43. (David: But it couldn't kill an alligator?) No, alligator skin is so tough, the bullets would probably bounce off! You've got to have what they call either a deer rifle or an elephant gun. An elephant gun shoots a big .50 caliber bullet, about half an inch wide, with an explosive shell that when it enters the elephant it explodes like a bomb and kills him! In most places now that's illegal because they don't allow hunters to destroy wild game. They keep them in nice big parks and feed them and the people just go look at them. So they don't allow hunting.

44. Big game hunters used to be popular when I was a kid, they used to go over to Africa and shoot a lot of elephants and big game and just leave them there to die! It's ridiculous! Maybe they'd just take their horns or tusks, because elephant tusks are made of ivory. They didn't have plastics in those days, so ivory was very precious and expensive. Piano keys and all kinds of ornaments and jewelry were made out of ivory.

45. So we were cowboys and we carried guns, and how in the World did I get onto that?—You can tread on adders, but watch out, you'd better not! I remember reading about a journalist visiting Sri Lanka who went for a walk down a jungle trail, stepped on an adder‚ got bit and would have died if the doctor hadn't given him some kind of antidote real quick and sucked the poison out of his wound!

TRAMPLE ON LIONS & DRAGONS!

46. So watch out for snakes because some of them could be poisonous and we don't want you stepping on one! But you've got this Scripture to claim if you do: "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: The young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet."

47. We think of dragons as gigantic big monsters, many times as big as a man, and there used to really be dragons like that! But do we still have any dragons today? I've seen gigantic lizards that you could maybe call small dragons. I sure wouldn't want to step on one of those! Of course it's wonderful how almost everything God made has some good use, as lizards are known to kill rats and mice.

48. But how are you going to tread on a lion? Well, I'll tell you how! Do you want to know how you can walk on a lion? (David: If he's dead!)—Right! When I was a kid, a lot of those big game hunters in Africa used to have pictures of themselves standing there with their rifle, with one foot on the ground and one foot on the lion's head to show they had conquered the lion, they were treading on the lion!

49. Anyhow, "the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet." The Lord says He's going to let you even walk on lions and dragons and adders and they still won't hurt you! Why? He was just talking about somebody protecting you! Who was that? (David: The Angels!)—The Angels will protect you!

50. Even if you walk on lions and dragons and adders‚ the Lord can still keep you by His powerful Angels guarding you! He'll keep you from smashing or dashing your foot on a rock and all kinds of things! He can even keep you safely from spending money when you're window shopping! (Maria: But it's better not to window shop!) Yes, it's better not to window shop at all! In fact, it's better not to even go shopping if you don't have to. God bless our dear shoppers who sacrifice and suffer for us, running around town!

51. Well, I think that's enough lesson for today! We've already passed our half-hour, I believe, so it's your turn to pray, David. (David: Thank You Jesus for this good Psalm study Grandpa gave. We know that wherever we are, You can still protect us, Lord. We can tread upon dragons and adders and lions, but still Your Angels are always with us and protecting us. We really thank You for that, Jesus, and for how we haven't had any major troubles or accidents or hurts. Thank You for Your mighty protection and that Your Angels are always on the alert and watching over us. We pray for the rest of this day, Lord, that You'll bless and keep us safe in whatever we do! Please help all our work to please You, Lord. Help us to really redeem the time, because the days are so short, in Jesus' name!) Amen, TYJ! Amen‚ amen‚ Lord. Do bless and keep us and make us a blessing‚ in Jesus' name! As we pray Thy Prayer about the Millennium, Lord: (Prays the Lord's Prayer.) PTL! GBY!

52. That was a good lesson, we learned a lot about a lot of things! Grandpa sure talks about a lot of funny different things, but somehow or another they always come up because I have to explain something you don't know about, like window shopping! But that was interesting, wasn't it? That was fun and funny! GBY! Somehow or another, Grandpa always gets to be funny as well as have fun!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family