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The Jehovah's Witnesses: their Beliefs and PracticesBang up to date!The Jehovah's Witnesses: Their Beliefs and Practices A few decades ago the BBC produced a highly confrontational programme entitled In the Lions' Den. Transmitted regionally in Wales it presented a lone JW spokesman before a group of students and teachers from a theological seminary. In the resulting fiasco it became all too painfully obvious that the 'lions' had come ill prepared for battle and the JW was able to run circles round them, as they moved from subject to subject. Towards the end of the programme one of the 'lions' stormed off the set and the Witness was left very much the victor. Following the screening at least one secular newspaper lampooned the event with a great deal of acidic wit. It was not a good day for orthodoxy. What happened in that television programme in the 1960s all too often happens on our doorsteps when the JW calls. We go round and round, get nowhere and end up drained and frustrated. Doug Harris has spent 16 long years at the sharp end of cult ministry. As a key member of the highly respected Reachout Trust he must be one of the most qualified authors in the UK to write on the Watchtower movement. If you really want to help the Witness at your door, if you carry a burden for these sincere, dedicated, zealous but fearfully misguided people, then get this book and read it. Better still, get down to studying it, be prepared to keep it by your front door and use it when the time is right. Doug Harris not only makes a brilliant defence of orthodox belief, his section on the Trinity is worth studying apart from any application to the JWs. The entire volume is bang up to date, with much material that is new. Thanks to the explosion of anti-JW sites on the internet, a wealth of data is now available and clearly Doug Harris has tapped into this. It has to be said that, apart from those books written by prominent ex-witnesses, in particular Raymond Franz and Prof. James Penton, most books on the Witnesses lack good research and balance. The Jehovah's Witnesses: Their Beliefs and Practices makes for a refreshing change. I recommend it with total enthusiasm.Richard Cotton© Evangelicals Now - February 2001 |