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