Making Use of the World but Not to the Full
As told by Harold L. Zimmerman
SOMEDAY the decision would have to be made—that I knew. But fear of man, what people might think, and the desire to be popular caused me to keep putting it off.
To tell the story from the beginning: When I was just three years of age, my grandfather taught me to stand on my head. I loved it! When the circus came to town, the tumbling on the ground and somersaults on trampolines enthralled me. It became my heart’s desire to do those things. As a child, walking on my hands and practicing fancy diving for hours on end every summer was an all-absorbing interest.
At the age of 12, I was introduced to what came to be my first love—tumbling and gymnastics. Soon our local team was winning Pennsylvania regional and state high-school championships. My name along with the names of my teammates appeared frequently in the newspapers. I enjoyed every minute of it! But whenever I stopped to think seriously, it came home to me: I was running away from something—putting off the decision of my life.
You see, my grandparents on both sides from the early 1900’s were Bible Students (as Jehovah’s Witnesses were then known) and were active in talking about God’s Kingdom to others. My mother used to tell my older brother and me about that Kingdom and how it will put an end to wickedness and cause God’s will to be done upon this earth.
For years I prayed nightly to Jehovah, telling him that “someday” I would serve him “but not yet.” I frequently prayed, “When I get to be 19, then I’ll serve you”—but I didn’t. Tumbling and gymnastics were my life.
The Big Decision
In 1942 I was 20 years old and in my second year of college at Pennsylvania State. That spring I won the eastern intercollegiate and national collegiate gymnastic championships and tied for first place in the national A.A.U. (Amateur Athletic Union) meet. My hope was one day to enter the Olympic Games. As you can see, the world was most appealing to me, and I was involved in it to the full.
At that time the United States was at war and the spirit of patriotism was running high. The movies glamorized serving in the armed forces, and catchy tunes and lyrics stirred the emotions with sentiments of romance, duty and glory. Who would not want to be part of this noble effort to free the world of Nazi tyranny and guarantee freedom and peace for all peoples?
I could understand why many felt that the only thing to do was to pitch in and help clean this whole thing up. Yet why all the song and glory? War is an unspeakably horrible business! Why not admit it? All of this disturbed me tremendously.
In September of 1942 I returned to Cleveland, Ohio, to attend the New World Theocratic Assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The main talk “Peace—Can It Last?” deeply impressed me. The speaker considered Revelation chapter 17, explaining that the beast that ‘was, but is not, and yet will be present,’ was the League of Nations, which would be revived after the war. This arrangement, too, the speaker said, was destined to fail and go off into destruction. God’s Kingdom would then take over the rulership of the earth to bring lasting peace. This vital information was to play a big part in helping me to make my decision.
Although I returned to college that fall, I began to study the Bible seriously, but in secret, in the fraternity house where I lived. How crystal clear it became to me now! God’s Kingdom alone can put an end to wars and bring lasting peace on earth. How foolish it would be to pin my hopes on a world doomed to failure! Convinced beyond all doubt, the question was: Would my faith be strong enough to cause me to act—to make my decision?
Soon thereafter, one night I just could not get to sleep. The campus clock struck one, then two, o’clock. All the other lads in the dormitory were fast asleep. Climbing down from the second tier of the bunk bed, I walked over to the window that was open on the third floor of the fraternity house. It was a crisp autumn night. I prayed to Jehovah God and confessed to him how afraid I was. Nevertheless, right then and there my long postponed decision was made. A few weeks later I left college for good, determined to serve Jehovah to the fullest extent possible.
Now, however, the question was: Could I convince the draft board to exempt me from military service, since I could not conscientiously go to war? The Selective Service law made provision for special classification and exemption from military service for ministers of religion and those studying for the ministry.
Old friends, acquaintances and important men about town tried to talk me out of my decision.
“But what if everyone did as Jehovah’s Witnesses do?” some asked.
“If everybody took that stand, as Jehovah’s Witnesses do all over the world, there would be no war,” I answered. No one could change my mind. My decision had been made, based on John 15:19.
Some three months later my trial came up in a Federal courtroom. After a brief hearing in which I explained why I felt I should be considered a minister of religion, the judge instructed the 12-man jury: “The question is not whether this young man is sincere in his beliefs or not, or whether he is a minister of religion or not. The question is, Did he or did he not obey government order to report for induction into the armed forces? The fact that he is here in court today is proof that he is guilty!” He warned the jury members that they dare not come back with a verdict of “not guilty”!
The verdict? “Guilty, but we recommend clemency,” the jury stated. Still the judge delivered the maximum sentence: Five years incarceration in a federal institution to be designated by the attorney general. I was sent to Chillicothe, Ohio.
Time Well Spent
A regular highlight for the imprisoned Witnesses was the visit of Brother A. H. Macmillan, of the headquarters staff of the Watchtower Society. He would tell us: “You are a good deal like a man seated backward on a train. He can’t see things outside the window until they have gone by.” He assured us that in years to come we would appreciate more fully the value of the time we were spending there. How true those words were!
We soon organized a nightly study course patterned after the Gilead School for training missionaries. We studied through the Bible several times and read all the Watchtower Society’s Bible study aids. The knowledge acquired during those three years, eight months and five days of confinement provided a firm basis for continuing the career I chose that autumn evening at college—now some 40 years ago.
As soon as I was released, I enrolled as a regular pioneer (a full-time Kingdom proclaimer), joining my mother in a pioneer assignment in Washington, D.C. There I met a pioneer sister who was to become my wife. Together Anne and I continued in various pioneer assignments that eventually led to our going to the 18th class of Gilead School in 1951. Our missionary assignment: Ethiopia, East Africa.
Missionary and Part-Time Paymaster
In order to send missionaries there, the Society had to agree to open schools in Ethiopia. So my wife and I went in as schoolteachers. Activity in the field service was limited, but, nevertheless, good progress was made in what was then the land of Haile Selassie.
During our second year there, our first child, Ronald, was born. What would we do now? Return to the States? No, we had no intention of leaving our assignment. I found work as Disbursement Officer with the Ethiopian Department of Highways. Part of my job was to pay the laborers in cash in the various road camps around the country.
Soon I saw that I could handle the payrolls in just 15 days out of the month. So I made the proposal to the Administrative Officer that he let me work just part time, leaving me the rest of the month free for preaching activity. He accepted. Thus I was able to return to the regular-pioneer ranks.
While we were back home on vacation in 1955, our second child, Donna, arrived. We fully intended to return to Ethiopia, but because of visa complications and finally the expulsion of the other missionaries, we never did. I had to work full time in the States for several years, devoting evenings and weekends to Kingdom service. We always, though, felt unsettled for some reason.
“Set the Date and Then Go!”
In 1957 we attended an assembly in Los Angeles, when Sheri, our number three, was just 12 days old. One look at the program and we found what we had been waiting for. It was the talk entitled “Serving Where the Need Is Great.” We thought, “There’s where we fit in. A place for us at last!”
We chose Colombia, South America, as the country where we wanted to serve, but we decided to wait until after the big international assembly in New York the next year, 1958. We thought April of 1959 would be the best time for me to make the journey to look things over. The cross-country trip to the New York assembly and then hospital bills with the arrival of David, our number four, exhausted all our funds. What now?
Just two weeks before my planned departure, at a semiannual circuit assembly, a few brothers approached us and said that they heard that we were planning to go to South America to serve where the need was greater. I did not know what to say, since by that time we had been able to lay aside only $100 (U.S.) for the trip. However, something very interesting happened.
One of the speakers on the program, directing his words to prospective pioneers, stated that they should not wait until they had a car, a trailer and money in the bank before starting pioneer service. “Set the date and then go!” he emphasized. We applied that counsel and decided to go ahead with our plans.
A week before my planned trip, I told Anne to phone the airline and make a reservation for me the following Friday for Barranquilla, Colombia. We didn’t even have enough money for a one-way ticket for me, let alone for the rest of the family. And time was growing very short!
Well, Anne made the reservation and had scarcely hung up the phone when the doorbell rang. It was the mailman with an envelope from the Internal Revenue Service—a check for $265—reimbursement for excess income tax withheld from my salary during 1958! That is not all. The following day, Saturday, three congregations with which we had associated during our stay in Los Angeles had a barbecue for us. Imagine our surprise when the brothers assembled there gave us a contribution of $350 to help us with our plans!
A Bible Example Helps Me Decide
The following Friday night, leaving Anne and the children in Los Angeles, I headed southeastward for Colombia, South America, the next two weeks to be spent in looking for work.
Shortly after my arriving, something really disturbing came up. I read in the daily papers about mass killings in the interior of the country. An undeclared civil war was in progress between two rival political factions, with senseless massacring of whole communities. This had been going on for ten years! Why had I not heard about this before? Did I really want to bring my family down to live in conditions like these?
When making decisions, my wife and I had made a practice of looking first in the Bible for guiding principles and examples. The most pertinent passage I could think of in this case was Numbers chapter 13, where Moses had sent 12 scouts to spy out the Promised Land. All but two came back with negative reports. The people then complained that Moses had brought them out into the wilderness to perish, along with their wives and little ones. Jehovah’s answer was: Their own bodies would fall during 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. But their children, whom they claimed they were worried about, would live to enter the land of Canaan.
There was the answer! At that I phoned Anne in Los Angeles and asked her to sell out, pack up and come on down. Our limited budget did not allow for another trip back to California for me. With the help of our brothers in Los Angeles, Anne sold the car and household furnishings and packed up our remaining belongings for the trip. Soon she and the little ones, from five years down to five months of age, were winging toward Colombia and a happy family reunion.
It was not until six weeks later, when our funds had dwindled to just three dollars, that I finally started working for an international firm, in the internal auditing department.
Soon the political scene changed, bringing about a more stable government. For the past 24 years now there has been freedom of worship, making it possible for the Kingdom-preaching work to be extended widely throughout the land.
Making Use of the World but Not to the Full
Down through the years, we have ever striven to keep in mind the apostle Paul’s counsel that “those making use of the world [be] as those not using it to the full.” (1 Corinthians 7:31) It is not always easy to keep proper balance—trying to do a good job for your employer and at the same time putting Kingdom interests first in your mind and heart.—Matthew 6:33.
I worked full time secularly for the first two years in Colombia, while we served with a small congregation in Cali. Then we decided to move out to a smaller city nearby to serve where the need was even greater.
I proposed part-time work to the finance manager, assuring him that I could handle the job while working just half a day. He accepted. I worked under this arrangement for the next seven years until the cost of living and the growing needs of the family made it advisable for me to go back to work full time. Those seven years were well spent, allowing me time for the pioneer ministry and rewarding family association.
During the past eight years I have been working under a special contract arrangement with a flexible schedule. This allows me to take time off as needed. Thus, I have been able to substitute as circuit overseer and on occasion as district overseer, in addition to serving as an instructor in the Society’s schools for training Christian elders and regular pioneers.
The children are grown now. Both boys are ministerial servants and the two older children are married. How gratifying it is to see them following the same routine they learned in early childhood, taking their little ones regularly to congregation meetings and out in the field ministry! Our hope and constant prayer is that our grandchildren will become fifth-generation Witnesses.
Now, all things considered, I can sincerely say that I did not ruin my life when I made my decision that night in college over 40 years ago. Our life has been meaningful, and Jehovah has never let us down, as we have endeavored to make decisions in harmony with his principles—‘making use of the world,’ yes, ‘but not to the full.’
[Picture on page 26]
Preaching in Colombia with my wife Anne