From Chapter II of Marley Cole's book
ONE
ONE
GROUP OF PEOPLE took their religion
seriously enough to go out 100 per cent (65 per cent of them
regularly every month) to share with their neighbors what
to them was the only good news in the world. In April, 1956,
when the United States population reached 167,440,000,
this
group consisted of 185,010 doorstep preachers-a national
peak. Their activities all over the world were in the
news. The Polish uprising did not quite smother out the
reports coming from that country that the Communist government
was reviewing and dropping charges of “American
espionage” against long-imprisoned Witnesses and freeing
them-at the same time that the Polish clergy warned
the
public not to listen to the news that the liberated Witnesses
would be bringing to their doorsteps.
What news? Whatever the Witnesses had to tell the Poles,
it was the same news, without variation, in all countries.
In
frain. Against the background of the jittery, confused and
calloused mood of the people their message sounded. It announced
here and now a live and pulsing hope for life in
a
new world-here, now, and for this generation.
What is it like to lay aside your share of the world’s
troubles and go out and knock on strange doors and offer
comfort to your neighbor with the news that gave you hope?
How
many people are the Witnesses reaching?
On the basis of a cross-section count, it is conservative to
estimate that an average of ten houses a week are called
upon by each Witness. That means 1,850,000 homes, or
about four million people, a week. That
is 96 million homes
every year.
By their direct personal approach Jehovah’s Witnesses
are reaching more than the equivalent of the national
population within each twelve months.
Worldwide the Witnesses are active in more than 160
countries. They speak their good news in identical terms in
more than 100 languages. By 1957 as many as 640 thousand
were calling from house to house. At the same ratio
of ten
calls a week each, about
330 million homes were contacted
in a year. There are not that many homes in all of North and
South America and Europe combined.
Never in any age did a group of people concentrate
so
single-heartedly on the job of getting their message across
to the world. These figures must be a revelation to the heads
of churches. “There is no hope of some 300 thousand pastors
in America reaching the
70 million who are outside our
churches,” a pastor complained recently, in a plea for the
“laymen” to get out and preach. (The 1956 Yearbook
of
American Churches lists
2 13 thousand clergymen in active
charge of local churches.)
If 185 thousand Witnesses reach
165 million people within a year, why should the pastor
160 lands their voices were heard, heralding the same re
despair that the 300 thousand preachers he speaks of will
never reach a mere
70 million people?
To be sure,
it cannot be done unless the clergy revolutionize
their present routine. Modern clergymen
are overburdened,
and cracking
up under their duties, working
from thirteen to eighteen hours a day. But is their modem
regimen an improvement over the direct person-to-person
method of ministry that Jesus Himself inaugurated? After
1,600 questionnaires and ten thousand pages of evidence,
Dr. Samuel W. Blizzard, Professor of Social Science at New
York’s Union Seminary, came
up with the finding that
American clergymen, although the best-educated in American
history, have been robbed of their ministry to the degree
that they are no longer primarily preachers at all. The
preacher is no longer a character stepping out
of the Bible,
infused with the Word and the Will of his Lord. Today he
is “director of human relations,” employing a social rather
than a scriptural code. He must play five other roles that
leave little time for preaching-“the roles of pastor, counselor,
organizer, administrator and promoter
. . . ,” Dr.
Blizzard found. Orthodox clergy have no time to knock on
doors.
But
the Witnesses of Jehovah, where their number is one
Witness to one thousand population, successfully reach
the
total population, although
97 out of 100 Witnesses do their
preaching in their spare time.
Why is this resuscitation of Bible-type Christianity noteworthy?
What intelligible contribution can it make to
our
fantastically fas t-paced, mixed-up, nuclear-age civilization?
The churches have tried everything else, and nothing else
has worked. Nothing else has produced a people united,
century Christians were. Nothing else has brought people
to the startling awareness that a faith worth having is worth
propagating. Nothing else has given people a faith to live
for-even to die for, to consume them, fire them, preserve
them immune to the world, carry them away with their convictions
to
the extent that they cannot endure it, like Jeremiah,
unless they preach
it. The churches are realizing that
they have exchanged quality for quantity, that something
must be done, that Bible faith and practices cannot be improved
on in any age, that while they may not like the doctrines
of
Jehovah’s Witnesses they are going to have to adopt
Witness methods. In countries like America, alert church
leaders see the handwriting on the wall and are crying out
in alarm. In other countries, such as Russia and East Germany,
history has overtaken the churches and they must
grapple unprepared for their lives, learning too late that religion
can only survive in times of persecution by the ministry
of its so-called “laymen.”
Every believer a preacher, a house-to-house missionary,
was the identifying mark
of the first-century ministry. That
was why Christianity made spectacular progress during
apostolic days. Four hundred years ago conscientious priests
sparked the Protestant revolution to restore the priesthood
to the people. Their revolt was against an unscriptural evil:
a
highly segregated priestcraft, a hierarchical church structure
that had become a secular power. They sought to wrest
the ministry from the cathedral and restore it to the flock.
But Protestantism never achieved its shining goal. The ministry
of
the people foundered. The “laity” never became integrated
with the clergy. The rank and file sought not the
kingdom first. And now, as Protestantism looks into the mirror
of the contemporary scene, she sees staring back at her
the image of that from which she revolted, her own brand
of priestcraft.
That is why the Witnesses of Jehovah stand out in sharp
perspective. It is reassuring to know that what once was in
the time of Christ and the apostles can be again; that the
goal of the Wycliffes and the Luthers is not unattainable.
During the past 80-odd years this group has gradually, laboriously
rescued the Christian ministry from the pulpit and
planted
it in the hearts and minds and mouths of the rank
and file, and restored the pristine ideal of
a “preaching fellowship.”
What do these people say at the doorsteps of the nations?
Why
do they call on you? What do they seek?
Something fires them more than the “callers” from the
church around the corner who come to your house now and
then to invite you to church next Sunday. They call to do
more than invite
you to sign a “decision-for-Christ” pledge
on a piece of cardboard, while leaving your mind blank and
your heart bearing no imprint.
A young man named Arden Peters is an example of the
185 thousand peripatetic Witnesses of Jehovah who, by
1956, were busy morning, afternoon, and evening, throughout
every city and town and practically every village and
countryside in the United States. Calling on all, passing up
none, they accepted the total population as the “field” from
which their
flocks were gathered. Naturally they were running
into every conceivable kind of reaction.
Peters had learned to expect rebuffs and retorts from
harassed housewifes and nerve-shattered husbands. He rang
the bell of one of the “new” homes on his list, the residence
of
a man we shall call Carson Brown. The door opened a
Holding Mr. Brown’s gaze, Peters began. “Good evening,
Mr.
Brown. My name is Peters. I won’t take but a few moments.
I am calling at the request
of a worldwide society of
Christian educators. About six hundred thousand of our
ministers are making a worldwide survey. We are trying to
find out what people are thinking in all parts
of the earth
about a very timely question. Would you be
so kind as to
tell me what you think the answer is?”
“The answer,” Mr. Brown responded, “to what question?”
The Witnesses try within the first few seconds not only
to attract the householder’s concentration, but to make him
feel they have his best interests in mind.
“The question, Are we living in a marked generation?
That is, marked by Bible prophecy?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know.” Mr. Brown hurriedly shook his
head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Do you believe that we are living at the end of what the
Bible describes as the rule of Satan?”
‘‘I
didn’t know that Satan was ruling.”
“Would you say that this is God’s world? Or is God’s
world the New World to come? As we call from house to
house we find that millions
of people are asking that question.
They can understand why God might love a new world
of righteousness enough to give His Son for
its ransomer
and king. But they cannot understand why God would love
and deal with a wicked old world like ours, when the Bible
says that He hates every form of wickedness and is positively
going to destroy this old world and its god, Satan.”
“I never thought much about
it,” Mr. Brown shrugged
vaguely. “One way or another.”
“Do you read the Bible very much?”
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