Following ‘Your Light and Truth’
As told by Calvin Prosser
“SEND out your light and your truth. May these themselves lead me.” Those words of the psalmist have been my prayer for some sixty years now. Not only that, but Jehovah God in his undeserved kindness has all these years answered my prayer by ‘leading me in the tracks of righteousness for his name’s sake.’—Ps. 43:3; 23:3.
My grandfather was a geologist from Wales and homesteaded near Johnstown, Pennsylvania. This city is some seventy-five miles from Allegheny, where the Watch Tower magazine was published for thirty years, from 1879 until 1909. Grandfather was among the first to begin the mining of coal in this area. It was on this homestead in a coal-mining village called Prosser’s Hollow, adjoining Johnstown, that I was born March 20, 1896; about seven years after the famed Johnstown flood in which more than 2,200 persons lost their lives when a dam burst.
I was the third in a family of seven boys and attended a small one-room schoolhouse that served this coal-mining community. The instructor lived with my parents, who were very religious. Following the Welsh tradition, they were Presbyterian, and my father was an elder in the local church. During my early childhood considerable disturbance developed due to the industrial revolution of the Pittsburgh-Johnstown area, which brought in a lot of European laborers. Up till then Johnstown had been a calm religious city, but now things started to change. These Europeans were accustomed to drinking a lot of beer, and so in a short time within an area of five miles from our home ten breweries were built. Saloons sprang up all over and did a thriving business.
FIRST CONTACT WITH ‘LIGHT AND TRUTH’
We lived in a very nice home that was surrounded by a white picket fence. Along the edge of our four-acre holdings was a small stream, and across the stream was one of these saloons, a large one. I can well remember how my parents and other religious families were vexed because of the rowdiness of many of the beer drinkers in those saloons. It was during these times that one day there appeared at our door a man who said he was a minister of the International Bible Students Association. He offered us six books that were written by Pastor Russell, president of the Watch Tower Society.
He was immediately given a good audience by our family, for we were very interested in anything having to do with God and the Bible. We soon discovered that this devout minister did not believe in a burning hell nor in most of the other orthodox teachings of the Presbyterian Church. The thought occurred to my father that this devout man might be able to persuade the saloonkeeper across the creek to mend his ways and become a Christian. He suggested this to the minister, who accepted the challenge. He called on the saloonkeeper and, interestingly enough, his words fell on good soil. Soon the saloonkeeper became a believer in the Bible as taught by the International Bible Students and began preaching what he was learning to the people that came to his saloon. Being a man of strong convictions, he soon became very active in spreading the “good news.”
Then one day this saloonkeeper came across the bridge to our home. When we saw him coming we were reluctant to respond when he knocked on our door, we not knowing that he had had a change of heart and was now one of the “Bible Students,” as Jehovah’s witnesses were then known. Very much to our surprise he gave us a tract dealing with “No Hell.” It flamed into quite an argument in our home as my father was more familiar with the Scriptures than he was, although not understanding them as well. However, he kept bringing us tracts and we kept reading them.
Soon this man became known as “the former saloonkeeper,” for he sold his saloon with the stipulation that it would not be used as a saloon but for some other purpose. In order to provide for his family he now went to work as a laborer at a steel mill, which was quite difficult for him, as he never before had worked with his hands. From then on he was a welcome guest in our home and we obtained from him the six volumes of Studies in the Scriptures. This led to a marked change for a very devout and very staunch Presbyterian family. Yes, we left the Presbyterian Church, my mother in particular being very enthusiastic about the truth these volumes contained. She and I spent many hours reading and studying this new Watch Tower literature. Jehovah was indeed answering our prayers by leading us with his ‘light and truth.’
SPREADING ‘LIGHT AND TRUTH’ IN MIAMI
Then in 1909 we moved from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to Miami, Florida, more than a thousand miles south. There was good reasoning behind this move. We seven boys were growing up in a deteriorating community that was looking less and less like the white fence that surrounded our nice home, that is, morally speaking. Not only were the schools inadequate, but now it was becoming time for some of us boys to go to high school, and there was none nearby. Besides, the large steel mills and coal mines were filling the air with soot and smoke as well as bringing about other unpleasant living conditions. In contrast to all this, Miami was a paradise with its white streets, coral rock, palm trees and beautiful waterfront. Furthermore, mother had developed a throat condition because of the air pollution. All of this was good reason for our making this long move.
Miami then was a city of about 10,000 people who were practically isolated in southern Florida and encircled by the Everglades and swamps. Only one railroad and one road crossed this junglelike area. It was this area that came to be my new territory for spreading the good news of God’s kingdom. Having now gained a knowledge of God’s Word and purposes, I realized how important it was to make these truths known to others. So in the fall of 1910 I symbolized my dedication to do Jehovah’s will and to follow his ‘light and truth’ as a lifetime career. I took courage and confidence in Jehovah’s promise as recorded in Psalm 43:3: “Send out your light and your truth. May these themselves lead me. May they bring me to your holy mountain and to your grand tabernacle.”
Two years later, at the age of sixteen, I quit school and took a job working for a local newspaper, the Miami Herald. This I did so as to be able to buy from the Watch Tower Society literature that I could distribute throughout the community. In those days there were very few automobiles, and not having the means to buy one, I did all my traveling by bicycle. I worked for the Herald in the morning, and in the afternoon I would ride my bicycle out from Miami for half of the afternoon, witnessing as I went. Then I would take another route, witnessing to people on the way back for the remainder of the afternoon.
The closest meeting place was in Palm Beach, about 65 miles away, so our home was opened up as a place to meet and to study The Watch Tower. At first there were just a handful of us. But in my efforts of distributing the literature, I was able to interest others in attending the meetings, and so our attendance grew. I was too young at the time to conduct the Watch Tower studies, and so my father consented to do this. Wanting to have our meetings as complete as possible, I felt concern as there was no one to play the piano so that we might sing songs. Because of this I took lessons and learned to play all our hymns. But that was just as far as my musical education went, as I had no particular talent for music.
So that I could devote all my time to preaching the good news of God’s kingdom I quit the part-time job I had with the Herald, entering the colporteur work. Frequently my mother went with me in the house-to-house preaching activity, which was a great support to me in those early days of my full-time ministry. She faithfully encouraged me as much as she could until her death in 1921.
By then our congregation had grown large enough to rent a hall on Flagler Street in downtown Miami. I never felt that I had the qualities of leadership, nor did I feel equal to giving public talks. However, because I had a great desire for the truth of God’s Word and read and studied very extensively, I was frequently consulted and so was very happy to be able to help those in my congregation to obtain clearer understanding of the truth, which kept on growing ever lighter and lighter.—Prov. 4:18.
SERVING WITH THE WATCH TOWER HEADQUARTERS
Among those who were an inspiration to me were the traveling representatives of the Watch Tower Society, known as pilgrims. While in Miami they were always entertained at our home, and I treasured very much the conversations and the association I had with them. It was one of these pilgrims that stimulated my interest in the privileges of service available at the Watch Tower headquarters in Brooklyn, New York. So I made application and shortly was called, becoming a member of the Brooklyn Bethel family on May 15, 1922. I will always be grateful for the encouragement that was given to me to apply for Bethel service, as it has now been my “home, sweet home” for forty-six years.
The Society had just started to publish some of its own books, and my first ten years at Bethel were spent working on a machine sewing the parts of the books together. In those days we had only four of these sewing machines. Today we have thirty-seven, not to say anything of more sewing machines in other printing plants throughout the world. After those ten years it was my privilege to transport produce from the Society’s farms to the Brooklyn Bethel home, also for ten years. Although this work was hard, I enjoyed it very much. There was also food to be trucked from a shipping line that was used to transport citrus fruits from a farm that the Society operated in Florida. I also enjoyed supplying the Bethel family with various kinds of melons. To procure these I would go to the areas where they were grown and make profitable ‘deals’ with farmers who had surplus crops. But the aspect of this assignment that I enjoyed the most was the opportunities it afforded me for conversations with Brother Rutherford, the president of the Society in those years. He frequently spent time at one or the other of these farms, as it provided him with an ideal atmosphere in which to meditate and write.
Then in 1942 I had the privilege of again working at the making of books, helping for five years on a machine that trimmed the three sides of the books. In 1947 I was transferred to the shipping department, where I spent the next eight years of joyful service in having part in sending out the printed literature. It was always a source of real satisfaction to me to realize that this literature I was having a share in producing and shipping out is really the way in which Jehovah God today is answering the prayer of his servants to “send out your light and your truth.”
To see how Jehovah God has led his people and prospered his organization all these years has been very strengthening to my faith. When I first arrived at the Brooklyn headquarters, our publishing plant consisted of just a small area of rented space. Then in 1926 the Society built its own eight-story publishing plant consisting of 70,000 square feet of floor space. In 1949 a nine-story addition was constructed as an integral part of the original factory, adding 72,000 more square feet. It was only six years later that an undertaking thrilled us all again, namely, when the Society started construction of a thirteen-story building just across the street from our factory and which consists of 192,000 square feet of floor space.
This building was to be used primarily for printing and mailing out the Watchtower and Awake! magazines. As soon as this building was ready for use, I was assigned to the mailing department in this building where, at the time of this writing, it is still my privilege to be working. And how the distribution of these magazines, which play such a prominent role in Jehovah’s sending out ‘his light and truth,’ has grown! In the year 1922, when I first came to the Brooklyn headquarters, the Society produced 3,250,000 magazines. And what is the production figure now? Well, last year the Brooklyn plant alone produced more than fifty times that many, or as many magazines each week as we did in 1922 in a whole year!
Now in my years of physical decline my heart swells in gratitude and joy for the many blessings I have experienced in these fifty-eight years that I have followed the ‘light and truth’ of Jehovah’s Word, and in particular for the forty-six years I have been privileged to serve full time at His earthly headquarters.
Since writing his life story Calvin Prosser finished his earthly course—he being of the remnant of the heirs of the heavenly kingdom—dying December 13, 1968. Funeral services were held on Staten Island on December 16, the service being conducted by Max Larson, factory servant and a longtime personal friend as well as one of the directors of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. Among those present were friends and relatives from Florida and Delaware, as well as a score or more from the Brooklyn Bethel home, most of whom had known Calvin Prosser for upward of forty years. While his friends mourn his passing, they rejoice that now to him too the words apply: “Happy are the dead who die in union with the Lord from this time onward. Yes, says the spirit, let them rest from their labors, for the things they did go right with them.”—Rev. 14:13.