The Devil’s Night…
And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. (Ephesians 5:11-12)
The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. (Romans 13:12)
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: (1 Peter 2:9)
FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS; they don’t want to go away. Feelings are stubborn things; they don’ want go away. Another thing about facts and feelings is that they tend to run together so that we can not always tell the difference.
SINCE I WAS TEN OR SO, I’ve heard that Halloween is “the devil’s night.” Medlock Hollow, my birthplace, was a sanctuary of a sort. We were isolated and protected from the evils of urban life… except what we, ourselves, imported in. Nobody ever rolled our house with toilet paper. In fact, a roll of that kind of paper would have been a strange thing at our house and especially on our house, a tree, or in the outdoor privy. We didn’t “do” Halloween at Medlock.
WE WENT TO SCHOOL AT ALPINE, TN and it was somewhat “progressive.” On the morning after Halloween, at the elementary school, we discovered that the boys’ outdoor privy had been turned up on its side and we would have to scout for our own private place until a crew from the county could make it to Alpine and upright our school privy. Nobody dared to get close to the big square hole in the ground. We knew danger when we saw it. Fall in there and you were a “gon-er.” Finally, some men came, and it was wonderful (!) to see our privy back in its place.
ONE OF THE FARMERS DISCOVERED THAT HIS WAGON was on top of his barn. Some boys had removed the wheels and somehow lugged the wagon up on top of the barn and reinstalled the wheels. His big bull of almost a thousand pounds had somehow submitted to strangers and permitted himself to be led to the high school. They broke into the school and led the bull upstairs to the auditorium and tied him to a post.
FOR THOSE WHO HAVE HAD NO "BULL EXPERIENCE," I should tell you that a bull can be coaxed up the stairs ten times easier than he can be coaxed down the stairs. I still don’t know how they got that bull own those stairs. Alpine was “progressive” in the sense that it was in step with other places across America that was celebrating “The Devil’s Night:” a night that used fun, mischief, and pranks as an excuse to move into the more devilish forms of wild indulgence that came to be called “The Devil’s Night.”
IF INTERESTED, YOU CAN READ ABOUT IT AT WIKIPEDIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Night I plugged “Devil’s Night” into Google and in just seconds it registered 65-million hits on the Web. So, my use of “Devil’s Night” is not of my own creation to cast a slur at America’s “fun night.” At least 65-million places on the Web know about: “The Devil’s Night” and it’s associated with Halloween.
FOR US, A LOT CHANGED SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 7, 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. In one day, America dropped everything and went to war. We would never be the same. What the great depression could not do in 12 years, the Japanese did in one day. We woke up! For us, that meant moving 300 miles east to Mountain City, TN. Among other things, I was introduced to Halloween.
NOT "TRICK OR TREAT" BUT SOME JUST PLAIN MEAN STUFF. I heard it called “mischief” and “pranks.” It was a license to go beyond that, into the domain of “vandalism.” Other days you would go to jail, but on Halloween, somehow you got a pass to destroy property and lay burdens on people. The ground floor of Halloween was to soap the windows of the car and/or house.
WHEN WE MOVED TO MOUNTAIN CITY, TN IN 1942, I was suddenly a city dude, with running water and electric lights and an inside privy. I also learned that it was “progressive” in its observance of the Devil’s night.
IN MOUNTAIN CITY, WE COULD WALK OUT THE FRONT DOOR and see the elementary school and 100 yards further was the high school. We were in the lap of luxury! We were….affluent! (I had never heard of the word, but that was us!)
MY UNCLE QUALLS (MY DADDY'S BROTHER) found himself a bride and moved into a house with a tin roof about 200 yards from our house. We also lived about that far from the city jail. The sheriff lived in the jail. We had never been so safe. No rattlesnakes, coons, foxes, or wild cats (we had plenty of them all at Medlock).
HALLOWEEN ROLLED AROUND AND SOON AFTER LIGHTS WERE OUT, rocks were raining down on Uncle’s metal roof. Uncle ran out the front door and the boys got away. He latched the screen and left the wood door open. The rocks came down and when he pushed through the screen door, barefooted, there was a paper bag on fire on his porch. He began to stomp the fire(barefooted?) only to discover that the bag was almost half full of fresh cow manure. (All of this in sight of the county jail..!!)
THAT ALL PASSED AND HE WENT TO BED but left the front door open and the screen door un-latched so he could rush through the door. He was almost asleep when the gravel on the roof brought him to. He rushed through the house and kicked the screen door with his bare foot only to discover that they had found a railroad crosstie and laid it across the screen door. He must have broken some toes. So much for the affluent society we had moved into. This was a taste of “The Devil’s Night.”
THE WAR ENDED AND WE MOVED TO THE HOMESTEADS at Crossville, TN. We had 18 acres, a barn and farm animals, including a prize milk cow that gave four gallons of milk a day when she was fresh. Tennessee had an “open range” law which allowed people to turn their cows loose in the countryside to graze along the roads. It kept the roads clean, saved the State and County money and fed a lot of cows. Every place was responsible to keep their yards fenced and gated to keep cows out of their yards. Halloween came in 1946 and I was twelve.
ONE OF THE FAVORITE "TRICKS" OF HALLOWEEN was for a half-dozen boys to lift the rough Oak gate off its hinges and carry the gate a good distance down the road. The farmer would have to get help to carry his gate back and put it back on the hinges. We had our little crew and came to the 3rd gate. (The others were too tight to get off the hinges.) We lifted it off, proud of ourselves. We saw a light flash on the front porch and knew the man had gone inside and we had seen his living room light as he went inside.
A MINUTE OR SO AND THE LIGHT FLASHED AGAIN. We were moving along quietly with the gate and heard a metallic click, like the click of a shot gun. We set the gate by the side of the road and took off as fast as we could run. Ka-blaaam!!! It was indeed a shotgun and the shot scattered along the wire fence beside us. (He didn’t shoot into the road.)
THEN, A SECOND KA-BLAAM!!! And more pellets hitting the length of the wire fence. We were hoping it was only a double-barrel and not a pump gun with six shells. We ran and waited. That was all. Just two. It was enough. “Don’t bother his gate next year.”
That was right-much-more than “trick or treat.”
FAST-FORWARD to today. Most of the Halloween activity of today is with little kids dressed up in no-telling what. Some with a Halloween theme and many with any kind of a fun-dress-up they can find or buy on the cheap (or maybe not so cheap). Mama or Daddy are with them (and may come in the house with them if they are small) and they know the people where they are going and it’s totally a fun thing, and nobody has had a single thought about being evil; it’s a break in boredom.
BUT I MUST SAY THAT WE ARE STILL STUCK WITH THE OVERRIDING THEME of the occult…witches, goblins, super-power from somewhere and it turns us loose at least on the edge of mischief. I don’t know what they are doing in Detroit and Chicago; hunkering down for their lives. They kill several hundred every year, Halloween or not.
WE MUST BE CAREFUL IN OUR CHUCHES AND OUR FAMILIES what kind of memories we are installing in our little kids. Does it look like we are endorsing the occult? We are to do everything to the glory of God, and it is the responsibility of every family to do right before God in the raising of children.
WE CAN HAVE A HARVEST FESTIVAL AND HAVE JUST AS MUCH FUN. Fun is not necessarily over on the side of the devil. Fun is what we make it and we can have fun to the glory of God as easily as we can honor the devil. You think? There are all kinds of dopey, fun things we can do without getting in bed with the devil. Hope this helps.Ω
Read Through the Bible in a Year
October 30, 2019 – WEDNESDAY
A.M. Jeremiah 27-28 P.M. 2Timothy 4
(Bible Gateway will read this to you if you like. Look for the speaker icon.)
Great Verses to Memorize:
Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons; (Deuteronomy 4:9)
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7
Song for Today:
No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus – (Piano- Laura Francis) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5I2GQQExpY
And:
Victory in Jesus (3:25) (1st/2nd/Grade-Calvary Chr. School – Sou. Pines, NC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_2dN5XM114
(Wait several seconds. You may have to delete an ad.)
And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. (Ephesians 5:11-12)
The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. (Romans 13:12)
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: (1 Peter 2:9)
FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS; they don’t want to go away. Feelings are stubborn things; they don’ want go away. Another thing about facts and feelings is that they tend to run together so that we can not always tell the difference.
SINCE I WAS TEN OR SO, I’ve heard that Halloween is “the devil’s night.” Medlock Hollow, my birthplace, was a sanctuary of a sort. We were isolated and protected from the evils of urban life… except what we, ourselves, imported in. Nobody ever rolled our house with toilet paper. In fact, a roll of that kind of paper would have been a strange thing at our house and especially on our house, a tree, or in the outdoor privy. We didn’t “do” Halloween at Medlock.
WE WENT TO SCHOOL AT ALPINE, TN and it was somewhat “progressive.” On the morning after Halloween, at the elementary school, we discovered that the boys’ outdoor privy had been turned up on its side and we would have to scout for our own private place until a crew from the county could make it to Alpine and upright our school privy. Nobody dared to get close to the big square hole in the ground. We knew danger when we saw it. Fall in there and you were a “gon-er.” Finally, some men came, and it was wonderful (!) to see our privy back in its place.
ONE OF THE FARMERS DISCOVERED THAT HIS WAGON was on top of his barn. Some boys had removed the wheels and somehow lugged the wagon up on top of the barn and reinstalled the wheels. His big bull of almost a thousand pounds had somehow submitted to strangers and permitted himself to be led to the high school. They broke into the school and led the bull upstairs to the auditorium and tied him to a post.
FOR THOSE WHO HAVE HAD NO "BULL EXPERIENCE," I should tell you that a bull can be coaxed up the stairs ten times easier than he can be coaxed down the stairs. I still don’t know how they got that bull own those stairs. Alpine was “progressive” in the sense that it was in step with other places across America that was celebrating “The Devil’s Night:” a night that used fun, mischief, and pranks as an excuse to move into the more devilish forms of wild indulgence that came to be called “The Devil’s Night.”
IF INTERESTED, YOU CAN READ ABOUT IT AT WIKIPEDIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Night I plugged “Devil’s Night” into Google and in just seconds it registered 65-million hits on the Web. So, my use of “Devil’s Night” is not of my own creation to cast a slur at America’s “fun night.” At least 65-million places on the Web know about: “The Devil’s Night” and it’s associated with Halloween.
FOR US, A LOT CHANGED SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 7, 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. In one day, America dropped everything and went to war. We would never be the same. What the great depression could not do in 12 years, the Japanese did in one day. We woke up! For us, that meant moving 300 miles east to Mountain City, TN. Among other things, I was introduced to Halloween.
NOT "TRICK OR TREAT" BUT SOME JUST PLAIN MEAN STUFF. I heard it called “mischief” and “pranks.” It was a license to go beyond that, into the domain of “vandalism.” Other days you would go to jail, but on Halloween, somehow you got a pass to destroy property and lay burdens on people. The ground floor of Halloween was to soap the windows of the car and/or house.
WHEN WE MOVED TO MOUNTAIN CITY, TN IN 1942, I was suddenly a city dude, with running water and electric lights and an inside privy. I also learned that it was “progressive” in its observance of the Devil’s night.
IN MOUNTAIN CITY, WE COULD WALK OUT THE FRONT DOOR and see the elementary school and 100 yards further was the high school. We were in the lap of luxury! We were….affluent! (I had never heard of the word, but that was us!)
MY UNCLE QUALLS (MY DADDY'S BROTHER) found himself a bride and moved into a house with a tin roof about 200 yards from our house. We also lived about that far from the city jail. The sheriff lived in the jail. We had never been so safe. No rattlesnakes, coons, foxes, or wild cats (we had plenty of them all at Medlock).
HALLOWEEN ROLLED AROUND AND SOON AFTER LIGHTS WERE OUT, rocks were raining down on Uncle’s metal roof. Uncle ran out the front door and the boys got away. He latched the screen and left the wood door open. The rocks came down and when he pushed through the screen door, barefooted, there was a paper bag on fire on his porch. He began to stomp the fire(barefooted?) only to discover that the bag was almost half full of fresh cow manure. (All of this in sight of the county jail..!!)
THAT ALL PASSED AND HE WENT TO BED but left the front door open and the screen door un-latched so he could rush through the door. He was almost asleep when the gravel on the roof brought him to. He rushed through the house and kicked the screen door with his bare foot only to discover that they had found a railroad crosstie and laid it across the screen door. He must have broken some toes. So much for the affluent society we had moved into. This was a taste of “The Devil’s Night.”
THE WAR ENDED AND WE MOVED TO THE HOMESTEADS at Crossville, TN. We had 18 acres, a barn and farm animals, including a prize milk cow that gave four gallons of milk a day when she was fresh. Tennessee had an “open range” law which allowed people to turn their cows loose in the countryside to graze along the roads. It kept the roads clean, saved the State and County money and fed a lot of cows. Every place was responsible to keep their yards fenced and gated to keep cows out of their yards. Halloween came in 1946 and I was twelve.
ONE OF THE FAVORITE "TRICKS" OF HALLOWEEN was for a half-dozen boys to lift the rough Oak gate off its hinges and carry the gate a good distance down the road. The farmer would have to get help to carry his gate back and put it back on the hinges. We had our little crew and came to the 3rd gate. (The others were too tight to get off the hinges.) We lifted it off, proud of ourselves. We saw a light flash on the front porch and knew the man had gone inside and we had seen his living room light as he went inside.
A MINUTE OR SO AND THE LIGHT FLASHED AGAIN. We were moving along quietly with the gate and heard a metallic click, like the click of a shot gun. We set the gate by the side of the road and took off as fast as we could run. Ka-blaaam!!! It was indeed a shotgun and the shot scattered along the wire fence beside us. (He didn’t shoot into the road.)
THEN, A SECOND KA-BLAAM!!! And more pellets hitting the length of the wire fence. We were hoping it was only a double-barrel and not a pump gun with six shells. We ran and waited. That was all. Just two. It was enough. “Don’t bother his gate next year.”
That was right-much-more than “trick or treat.”
FAST-FORWARD to today. Most of the Halloween activity of today is with little kids dressed up in no-telling what. Some with a Halloween theme and many with any kind of a fun-dress-up they can find or buy on the cheap (or maybe not so cheap). Mama or Daddy are with them (and may come in the house with them if they are small) and they know the people where they are going and it’s totally a fun thing, and nobody has had a single thought about being evil; it’s a break in boredom.
BUT I MUST SAY THAT WE ARE STILL STUCK WITH THE OVERRIDING THEME of the occult…witches, goblins, super-power from somewhere and it turns us loose at least on the edge of mischief. I don’t know what they are doing in Detroit and Chicago; hunkering down for their lives. They kill several hundred every year, Halloween or not.
WE MUST BE CAREFUL IN OUR CHUCHES AND OUR FAMILIES what kind of memories we are installing in our little kids. Does it look like we are endorsing the occult? We are to do everything to the glory of God, and it is the responsibility of every family to do right before God in the raising of children.
WE CAN HAVE A HARVEST FESTIVAL AND HAVE JUST AS MUCH FUN. Fun is not necessarily over on the side of the devil. Fun is what we make it and we can have fun to the glory of God as easily as we can honor the devil. You think? There are all kinds of dopey, fun things we can do without getting in bed with the devil. Hope this helps.Ω
Read Through the Bible in a Year
October 30, 2019 – WEDNESDAY
A.M. Jeremiah 27-28 P.M. 2Timothy 4
(Bible Gateway will read this to you if you like. Look for the speaker icon.)
Great Verses to Memorize:
Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons; (Deuteronomy 4:9)
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7
Song for Today:
No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus – (Piano- Laura Francis) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5I2GQQExpY
And:
Victory in Jesus (3:25) (1st/2nd/Grade-Calvary Chr. School – Sou. Pines, NC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_2dN5XM114
(Wait several seconds. You may have to delete an ad.)
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