Giving Spiritual Help to Clergymen
PURPOSE OF CALLS RECOGNIZED
One of Jehovah’s witnesses in North Carolina relates this experience: “After mailing out the special Awake! on Spain to most of the clergymen in our territory, we decided to deliver one personally to a Methodist minister, since we had had several Bible discussions with him. Right away we got into a Bible discussion, and he asked what we believed the sin against the holy spirit to be. I referred him to Hebrews 6:4-6, and he got his own Bible. After reading the scriptures, he said that, to tell the truth, he had never read that scripture before. He next asked what we believed about hell. When we said it was mankind’s common grave, he said that he believed the same as the Witnesses on that. He said he could not start teaching in church that there was no burning hell because it might offend some, but he wanted to introduce the truth gradually to his congregation. Then he said: ‘I guess that’s why you keep calling to see me—to teach me the truth.’”
PRAYING FOR HELP
Another Witness in North Carolina relates this experience about calling at the home of a minister of the Church of God: “He told me that he had taken the magazines from a lady on the street for the first time in his life, though he had always been told by his superiors never to read them. However, lately things had been bothering him to the extent that he did not attend church or preach for over a month. When he arrived home, he immediately sat down to read the magazines. He became so interested that he wrote the Watch Tower Society, asking for more information. He stated that he had been praying to the Lord to help him, as he was thoroughly confused.”
AFTER MANY YEARS
A Witness out in the magazine work in Virginia called at the home of an elderly man and placed both The Watchtower and Awake! After calling back, the Witness offered him the book “Let Your Name Be Sanctified,” and a study was started. One day after the close of the study, he expressed how much joy he was getting out of his study in the Bible. He further stated that he had been a minister for more than sixty years and thought that he had been rendering service to the true God. Now he was just beginning to learn how to serve Jehovah and to be a minister for him. He began to attend the meetings at the Kingdom Hall regularly, and he took part in the field ministry. After studying a little more than five months, he symbolized his dedication to Jehovah and was baptized at the Greensboro North Carolina, Courageous Ministers Assembly, in 1962—when he was ninety two years old.