Cynic --
You have a vivid imagination! Good grief!
I was in a similar situation. It was a month
before I was to be married (1st time). My fiance
and I were walking down a street one night near
my home, when five young men came up and
asked us where someone I had never heard of
lived. We answered that we did not know. They
threatened us if we did not tell; this did not
somehow give us the unknown information, so
we still said we did not know.
They circled my fiance, cutting me off from him,
and said that if we did not tell, they were going
to take Pat down. I got nervous, raised my voice,
and said that I honestly had no idea, I had never
heard of him before. They started beating on
Pat, teling me to be quiet and tell, or he had had
it. I went silent, praying, wondering what to do.
Then I saw that one had raised a pipe above
his head. Ignoring their demand that I be quiet,
I screamed--loudly.
At that point, a neighbor opened his window
across the street, stuck a rifle out, and yelled,
"Leave them alone, or you've had it!"
The young men scattered, leaving us to run to
Pat's car and escape.
We told nothing but truth throughout this inci-
dent, and we prayed. Yes, I believe we
escaped by the grace of our God. When the
police came, they found the young men,
searched their car, and found a gun in it.
Convert
My father was in sales for a short period of time
when I was a child. He was encouraged to lie,
too, but he refused. He was threatened with
firing for this, until his boss heard a conversation
between a customer and my father.
Apparently, this woman had been coming in,
looking at appliances, for a long time and had
never bought anything. She was a thron in their
flesh, a frustration, and a challenge.
That day, she went up to my father and asked
him about a particular stove. This stove had
been sold at one time and returned a couple
days later. They put it on "sale," but the sales
personnel were told not to say that ir had been
used. When she talked to Father about the stove,
he told her outright that it had been used a
couple days and returned for a better model.
Unknown to him at the time, his boss heard him
and was hopping-mad.
The lady responded that he was the only honest
sales person in the store, and that she would buy
the stove from him but from no one else. She
did, and he kept his job. From then on, when
she came in, she asked for him and would deal
with no one else.
