It is within this complex that the clean-cut Bethelites move en masse four times a day, flooding the elegant streets of Brooklyn Heights to attend strictly scheduled meals and meetings, clothed in conservative dresses and simple suits and ties, some hand-made, others hand-me-downs.

Inside the printing plant on Adams Street, the biggest of the group's 33 publishing operations, young men and women of all races change into jeans, T-shirts or other work clothes and join long production lines. There they cut, stitch, glue and stack tens of millions of copies of the New World Translation Bible, the society's religious magazines "Watchtower" and "Awake!" and other religious literature to be distributed for free.

With exceptions made for those with special professional skills, workers must be between 19 and 35 years old when they first come to the Brooklyn headquarters. Some stay on for the rest of their lives. Others move back to their hometowns and find other work.

"People look at it as a great privilege to be here," said Paul Kerswill, a 33-year-old mechanical engineer who works in the plant. "To come, you must have high spiritual and moral standards." Unconverted Neighbors

Outside the complex, the Witnesses have sought to make converts among the residents of Brooklyn, but with little success. Larry and Nancy Modula, for instance, face constant rejection as they move from door to door in a section of the neighborhood designated as their territory.

Few residents in the neighborhood, a traditionally liberal, tolerant community of artists, lawyers and doctors, complain openly about the Witnesses' religious views, which include a strict adherence to Bible text, refusal of blood transfusions, the practice of "disfellowship," or shunning of those who break church rules, and the belief in an impending Armageddon -- the end of the world that church members predicted would come in 1914, then in 1975. Now, though they say it could come any time, they say they do not know exactly what the year will be.

But when they see Witnesses coming, most Heights residents simply walk briskly by, their eyes cast aside, or do not answer their doorbells. On one door, where other New Yorkers put "No Menus" signs, Mr. and Mrs. Modula found a note penned in red: "Jehovah's Witnesses Not Welcome."