Who Can Help?
◆ If a person’s heart is truly touched by the good news found in the Bible, he wants to help others have the marvelous hope of living in a paradise restored to earth. He does not need to know all there is in the Bible in order to help others. Neither does he have to be ideally equipped as a teacher. All sorts of limitations and problems can be overcome if one truly wants to help.
This is illustrated with the experience of a Spanish-speaking woman associated with a congregation of Jehovah’s witnesses in New York city. Note who were willing and able to help her:
“I was a member of the Christian Spiritist Church. My husband is the ‘Reverend’ of this church. Many times Jehovah’s witnesses came to my door to discuss the Bible with me. Often I flatly refused to speak with them. Or I would not open the door.
“One day an elderly man came to my door to witness to me from the Bible. He obviously was uneducated and could barely read. As I saw him struggling with his Bible, I was touched by his sincerity and invited him in. He explained that he was just learning to read; he had begun to associate with Jehovah’s witnesses and they were teaching him to read and write. Humbly he apologized for not being able to read better. Yet he explained that he knew how urgent it was to preach the message being carried earth wide by Jehovah’s witnesses and so he decided to preach as best he could. As he was so limited in his reading ability, I helped him look up the scriptures and I would read them aloud. Then he would comment on them as best he could.
“He invited me to study the Bible with him. Moved by the sincerity he displayed in his preaching, I agreed. However, after one or two visits it was obvious that he had not yet learned to read sufficiently to be able to conduct a regular study of the Bible with me. He arranged for his wife to take up the study.
“On the first of her visits it was plain that here too there was a problem. She was advanced in age and could hardly hear. The study progressed slowly and I learned some points about God’s kingdom. But there was a considerable barrier since she was almost deaf. Finally arrangements were made for another Witness to visit and study with me. “Before long I saw the futility and unscripturalness of spiritistic practices. I decided that, to please God, I had to abandon the church that I had been attending. My husband protested, but I quietly asked why it was that he as the ‘Reverend’ had not been able to give me a solid foundation in the truth. Yet an elderly man, just learning to read, and his aged wife, almost deaf, had been able to convey what my husband had so long failed to do.
“Now I have dedicated my life to God and am helping others to learn the way of truth from his inspired Word.”
If you too have been studying the Bible with Jehovah’s witnesses or are learning of God’s purposes by means of their publications, do you feel the urgency of helping others to learn what you have learned? Advanced age, inability to read fluently, deafness, youth, family responsibilities—none of these are insurmountable barriers. Will you answer the question “Who can help?” with a firm, “I can”?