Out of Darkness into Light
As told by Wenzel Kuhn
‘CALLED out of darkness into his wonderful light!’ Those words of an apostle of Jesus Christ, at 1 Peter 2:9, have deep meaning for me. But to emerge from the darkness of this system of things into the light of truth of God’s Word was no Sunday afternoon stroll.
Born before the turn of the present century, I enjoyed a relatively happy childhood in a little village in the eastern corner of Bohemia. I was not quite five years old when my father died. Very early in my boyhood I sought to ponder over things in connection with faith in God.
So I often visited a town of pilgrimage that was favorable for my meditations. I saw things there that caused me to think: old crutches and spectacles and similar things hung up that had belonged to people who, it was said, had suddenly been made well in a miraculous manner. “Mother, is it possible for someone to be healed so quickly today?” I asked once. “Probably, y-e-s,” came the hesitant reply, but she could not tell me of an individual case. My attention was often drawn also to the processions that flowed toward this place of pilgrimage from near and far, the participants praying aloud the rosary or litany, sometimes accompanied by an effigy of Mary fastened to a wooden platform and carried on the shoulders of four men.
But to still other places of pilgrimage much farther afield my mother led me. What attracted my attention in my “studies” was the striking difference in clothing on the images of Jesus and the apostles, in comparison to the richly robed bishops and popes. The former were always clothed like the common people. Why was Jesus never to be seen in beautiful priestly robes? Surely he, above all, and his apostles who wore only ordinary clothing would have deserved such magnificent apparel, I thought to myself. And how did this conspicuous change in clothing come about? I got no farther in my reflections; I seemed to be lacking the “clue.” At that time I did not even know of the existence of the Holy Bible.
I was already in my twelfth year when the priest brought a black-covered book with him one day to religious instruction in school, explaining to us that this book contained the Holy Scriptures and there were prophecies in it. “Just a book for the clergy,” I thought to myself.
When I left school at fourteen years of age, I chose an occupation that would allow me to see something of the world. I traveled from Bohemia to the Austrian Tyrol, and a year later, in 1914, to Switzerland. In late summer that year I came to know Jehovah’s witnesses and, through them, the Bible.
TRUTH BEGINS TO PENETRATE
Arriving in Switzerland, I noticed in the Anzeiger für die Stadt Bern, delivered to every household in the city of Berne, the heading “Religious Services,” and the large number of religious denominational meetings that one could attend. I went to several. But I was not impressed with what I heard. I studied the column again and found near the bottom one called “Bible Students Association.” Bible? Had not I heard that word once before? Yes, on that occasion in school! “What is this book, the Bible, really like?” I wondered. “I must find out.” So I attended the meetings of the “Bible Students,” once, twice, and still I kept going. What I heard there excited my greatest wonderment. The Bible is God’s Word, God’s revelation to man of his purposes!
I can hardly describe the deep happiness that welled up in my heart as I held the first copy of the Bible that I bought. Its contents absorbed me completely. World War I had begun to rage around the boundaries of this country, and the “Bible Students,” as Jehovah’s witnesses were called at that time, showed me in their books that the events taking place pointed to the beginning of the time of the end of the wicked system of things. The chronological proofs that the publications offered fascinated me. “Is it really possible that a person can foresee such events by means of the Bible?” I pondered. The very proofs for this I held in my hand. “Now here I can learn still more about this great God,” I thought, and I was not mistaken. I had one surprise after another. I learned that God has a personal name, Jehovah, a name that I had never heard before. This was all so new and made a very great impression upon me.
I had to put forth great efforts in those first few months after I came in contact with these Bible truths, to wrestle my way out of my spiritual darkness and to come to a clear and crystallized conviction. I had continued to go to church on Sundays as my mother had taught me. But while the priest was reading mass, I drew the Bible out of my pocket and read in it instead of the prayer book. But I was aware that this could not go on indefinitely. After careful consideration of the whole situation, I made my decision to come out of darkness into the light of God’s Word, the Bible.
ANXIOUS MOTHER SEEKS TO INTERVENE
That I could not keep silent about all the wonderful truths learned was only natural. Full of joy, I wrote to my mother about these Bible truths. But she did not share my enthusiasm. To the contrary, she was deeply disturbed. “You are on the direct road to hell,” she wrote back. But when she saw that her warnings and threatenings did not succeed in turning me back to the church, she wrote the parochial authorities in Berne to take me into their care. One of the priests asked me to visit him, and I was able to have long conversations with him on three occasions. “What do you have against the church that you want to leave it?” I was asked. “The church does not teach what God’s Word says,” I answered, and cited the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as an example. During all these discussions the priest was unable to convince me of such a doctrine. In consequence I could see the light of truth of God’s Word even more clearly, as stated at Ezekiel 18:4: “The soul that is sinning—it itself will die.” Convinced that man does not have an immortal soul, I could see all the other teachings such as eternal torment, purgatory, prayers for the dead, and so on, fall like a house of cards. I withdrew my membership from the church.
When my mother saw that the parochial authorities could not move me to “return,” she wrote me that it would have caused her less pain if I had been killed in the war than for me to go over to another religion. In another letter she sent a photograph of herself with her face blotted out with ink, expressing thereby: I am ashamed of you, I can hardly see you anymore! And that she meant this seriously she showed me later. In 1928 we arranged to see each other in Austria, the first time since I had left her fifteen years before. When I entered the room I noticed that she quickly hid behind some furniture. I first greeted the other people present and talked to them about the journey and waited quietly until she came out from her hiding place. Later I brought her to Switzerland for two weeks. We had many interesting discussions. But her silence was noticeable time and again when I said, “What the Holy Scriptures state is alone valid for me.”
Not being able to overcome the truth of God’s Word, my mother adopted her last weapon: Tears! Her words were not seldom accompanied with many tears. That was not always easy to witness, but I could not let tears wash away my love for God’s Word and becloud for me the marvelous light of truth. At the end of still another argument and realizing that all her efforts to turn me away from my Bible-based beliefs were fruitless, she said tearfully: “Ah me! If only I had not given you birth!” “You are as hard as stone” was her closing remark, and there were no more tears from that day on.
BETHEL SERVICE AND CONVENTIONS
Having been called into God’s wonderful light of truth, I considered making the full-time preaching of God’s kingdom my new career. I presented myself for this service. “You could really come to the Bible House; we have enough work for you here,” I was told. There was already a Branch of the Watch Tower Society operating in Berne that was called the “Bible House” at that time. And so I became a member of this establishment, where I learned how to operate a linotype machine.
In 1935 I had the joy of joining several brothers on a trip to America to attend a convention in Washington, D.C. I had never seen such a tremendous crowd of truth-loving people as at that time in Washington—9,000 of them! I was privileged to hear the spectacular announcement that the “great crowd” spoken of at Revelation 7:9-17 is not a secondary heavenly class but is an earthly class of faithful people who will live on earth under God’s kingdom. This “new truth” reminded me of an incident about ten years before. A man who also numbered himself among Jehovah’s witnesses had expressed similar thoughts based on his own reflections and began to spread his ideas. But where was this man now? He had sunk into oblivion. This taught me that even when one thinks he understands something better than what God’s organization is teaching at the time, one should not push ahead presumptuously.
In 1953 it was made possible for me to attend still another convention at Yankee Stadium in New York. Such assemblies seem to me to be tokens of Jehovah’s approval upon his people. They bring prominently before our eyes what a magnificent organization of light Jehovah has on earth that is dispensing spiritual “food at the proper time.”—Matt. 24:45.
Surely a lifetime of service in a Bethel home, where such “food at the proper time” is prepared and dispensed, is a very blessed privilege, for it brings satisfaction that no worldly occupation can give. It is a satisfaction in the consciousness of having worked in harmony with God’s will. I thank the great God Jehovah for being called out of spiritual darkness into his glorious light.
(Despite impaired health in his later years, Brother Kuhn, who cherished the “upward call” referred to at Philippians 3:14, remained faithfully in the ministry at the Berne Bethel until his death on October 5, 1963.)