Jehovah’s Witnesses Answered Verse by Verse_Parts 5
Jehovah’s Witnesses Answered Verse by Verse_Parts 5,6,7
5
A Capsule History of Jehovah’s Witnesses
1879 Charles Taze Russell begins publishing his magazine, Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence
1881 Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society formed
1885 Society reports 300 “colporteurs” distributing literature
1886 Russell publishes his book, The Divine Plan of the Ages
1914 Armageddon fails to occur as prophesied
1916 Charles T. Russell dies
1917 “Judge” J. F. Rutherford assumes control of organization
1920 Society proclaims “Millions now living will never die!” and prophesies earthly resurrection to occur in 1925
1920 Organization reports 8,402 volunteers distributing Watchtower literature
1925 Earthly resurrection of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, et al., fails to occur as prophesied
1927 Watchtower factory is constructed in Brooklyn, New York
1930 “Beth Sarim” built in San Diego to house soon-to-be-resurrected prophets; “Judge” Rutherford lives there
1931 The name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” officially adopted
1935 Watchtower Society begins gathering “great crowd”; teaches them earthly hope, no share in communion
1938 Local JW congregations end democratic church government; submit to “theocratic” appointment of all local congregation officials by Brooklyn headquarters
1938 Organization reports 59,047 distributing literature; 69,345 attend annual communion; 36,732 partake
1942 J. F. Rutherford dies; N. H. Knorr becomes President
1943 N. H. Knorr institutes training programs for foreign missionaries and local volunteer workers
1948 Organization reports 260,756 distributing literature; 376,393 attend annual communion; 25,395 partake
1950 New World Translation of New Testament published, calling Jesus “a god,” inserting “Jehovah” in New Testament
1958 Organization reports 798,326 distributing literature; 1,171,789 attend annual communion; 15,037 partake
1968 The Watchtower’s article “Why Are You Looking Forward to 1975?” prophesies likelihood of Armageddon for that year
1975 Organization reports 2,179,256 distributing literature; 4,925,643 attend annual communion; 10,550 partake
1975 Armageddon fails to occur as prophesied
1985 Organization reports 3,024,131 distributing literature; 7,792,109 attend annual communion; 9,051 partake
6
Techniques for Sharing the Gospel with Jehovah’s Witnesses
“I was gunning for the next JW to darken my doorstep. As soon as he came, I fired one Scripture verse after another at him. You should have seen him dance! Then I let him have John 1:1 right between the eyes and blew him away!” Do you know someone who had an encounter like that with the Witnesses? If so, he may have won the battle but lost the war.
After a scriptural shoot-out like the above, the wounded and bleeding Witness runs back to his “elders” for protection and comfort. They patch him up by explaining away the damaging verses and warn him not to listen to “argumentative” householders again in the door-to-door preaching work. “Don’t worry!” he replies. “I never want to go through something like that again.”
This volume contains plenty of ammunition for waging spiritual warfare against the Watchtower fortress. But if the Christian warrior corners an individual Jehovah’s Witness and lets him have it with both barrels in rapid-fire succession, the result is likely to be disappointing. Since even the JW leaders know that the human mind can absorb only so much information at one time, they instruct Witnesses to plan on at least a six-month “study” with people they are trying to convert. Only the inexperienced Witness will bombard a householder with an Adam-to-Armageddon sermon on the first visit. The JWs are correct in their techniques, and that’s one reason for the amazing growth of their organization. So, we do well to learn from them—not their false doctrines, of course, but their effective methods.
However, the best example we can turn to for techniques is our Lord Jesus Christ. As the Master Teacher, he used well-chosen words as well as miracles to draw men to himself. Since he had to teach some startling new concepts to the Jews who became his disciples, we can learn much from his example, in our efforts to share the true gospel with Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Jesus knew how much his listeners would be able to absorb at one time, and he didn’t try to overfeed them. Even after he had spent many months with the apostles, he told them: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12, nkjv). The gospel consists of both “milk” and “solid food” (Heb. 5:12–14). If you give solid food to a baby too soon, he will choke on it and spit it out. Realizing that it may take a long time for a Jehovah’s Witness to un-learn false Watchtower doctrines and re-learn Bible truth, we should not give him too much to digest at one time.
Jesus could leave much of what he had to say until later, because he knew that the Holy Spirit would continue to teach the disciples—that “when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth… ” (John 16:13, nkjv). We, too, should trust that the Holy Spirit will teach new believers today, just as in the first century. We need not take it upon ourselves to correct every notion that a Witness has in his head. The Holy Spirit will take over where we leave off.
Moreover, Jesus was a shepherd—not a cowboy! He did not ride herd on the sheep, shooting guns and cracking whips like cowboys do in a cattle drive. No. He gently led the flock. Jesus called, and his sheep heard his voice and followed him. We can do the same by kindly presenting the gospel from the Word of God, confident that the sheep will hear and follow without our having to bully them into it. Jehovah’s Witnesses are accustomed to being bullied by their elders; we should stand out in contrast.
Notice, too, the teaching methods that Jesus used. Glancing quickly over any one of the four Gospel accounts, you will observe that many of his sentences had question marks at the end. Question marks are shaped like hooks—“ ? ”—and they function much the same way in hooking on to answers and pulling them out through the other person’s mouth. Jesus was highly skilled at using these fishing hooks. Rather than shower his listeners with information, he used questions to draw answers out of them. A person can close his ears to facts he doesn’t want to hear, but if a pointed question causes him to form the answer in his own mind, he cannot escape the conclusion—because it’s a conclusion that he reached himself.
On the other hand, if we provide the answers, the effect can be quite different. For example, we can tell a Jehovah’s Witness: “You have been deceived!” “The Watchtower organization is a false prophet!” “You need to get saved!” But, if the Witness has not yet reached those conclusions in his own mind, he is likely to become offended and reject whatever else we have to say. So, if we want him to reach those conclusions, we must lead his thinking in that direction. Rather than comment, “Look what that verse says! It says Jesus is God!” we could ask the Witness to read the verse aloud and then ask him, “Whom do you think the writer was referring to in this verse? … What did he say about him?” and so on. The JW may not say the right answer out loud, but you will see his facial expression change when he gets the point.
Empathy is so very important when reaching out to these misled individuals. Try to think of how you would want others to speak to you, if you were the one who was misled. Then remember that “all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them … ” (Matt. 7:12, kjv). The apostle Paul demonstrated that sort of empathy in the sermon that he presented to the men of Athens (Acts 17:16–34). Scripture tells us that “his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols” (v. 16, rsv). But, instead of letting that provocation spill out in a strong rebuke to these idolaters, Paul restrained himself and sought common ground for an appeal to them. He said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (vv. 22–23, rsv). We can do the same by acknowledging to a Jehovah’s Witness that we appreciate his zeal and his desire to serve God.
A few years ago two young Mormon missionaries contacted me wife, and she made an appointment for them to visit us. In the course of the discussion that evening, I “laid all our cards on the table” and strongly challenged them on the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. They were visibly shaken by the time they left, but we never heard from them again. More recently, two different Mormon boys contacted us, and we set up another appointment. But this time I applied some of the principles outlined in this chapter, feeding them information gently, a little bit at a time. As a result, we had a whole series of visits with them, giving us opportunity to plant much more seed, which we pray will be watered and will grow under God’s direction (1 Cor. 3:6–7).
Our more successful approach the second time around reminds me of the story of a young boy whom others in the neighborhood used to tease, calling him retarded. Knowing that the boy was really quite intelligent, an elderly neighbor inquired of the other boys why they teased him so. “Oh, we have fun with him because he’s so dumb,” one youngster replied. “If you hold a nickel in one hand and a dime in the other, and offer them both to him, he will take the nickel because it looks bigger. He’ll do it every time!” Later on, the elderly gentleman called the “retarded” boy over and asked him why he took the nickel. “That’s easy,” the child replied. “Some weeks I end up with a pocket full of nickels. But, if I took the dime, that would be the end of the game!”
So, whether it’s a matter of slowly collecting nickels, or finding common ground, or using probing questions, or saving some points for another time—or even a combination of all of these techniques when appropriate—we should give prayerful thought to our approach, so as to smooth the way for our message to reach the hearts and minds of our listeners.
And, above all, our hope for success should rest in the Lord rather than in ourselves, no matter how much preparation and study we may have done.
For the weapons of our warfare are not physical, but they are powerful with God’s help for the tearing down of fortresses, inasmuch as we tear down reasonings and every proud barrier that is raised up against the knowledge of God and lead every thought into subjection to Christ. (2 Cor. 10:4–5, mlb)
7
The Author’s Testimony
My early religious training was in a big, white Unitarian church in rural New England, just south of Boston. I still remember the time when, in my boyish innocence, I expressed to the pastor my belief that God had actually parted the Red Sea to let Moses and the Israelites pass through. He turned to the assistant pastor and said with a laugh, “This boy has a lot to learn.” As I grew older I did, in fact, learn what this church taught. Encountering their pamphlet, What Unitarians Believe, I read that “Some Unitarians believe in God, and some do not”—and quickly realized the ministers must have been among those who did not believe.
By the time I was fourteen years old, I had reached my own conclusion that religion was “the opium of the people,” a convenient thought for an adolescent who preferred not to have God watching him all the time. And when I went on to Harvard University, I found that atheism and agnosticism flourished there, too. So, between the Unitarian church and my Ivy League schooling, I seldom encountered any strong pressure to believe in God.
By the time I was twenty-two, though, I had thought through atheistic evolution to its ultimate end: a pointless existence, followed by death. After all, if humans were nothing more than the last in a series of chemical and biological accidents, then any meaning or purpose we might try to find in life would just be a self-deceptive fiction produced in our own minds. It would have no real connection with the harsh, cold reality of a universe where nothing really mattered. So, I saw myself faced with two choices: God or suicide. Since suicide would be an easy way out for me (I believed there was nothing after death) but would leave those who cared about me to face the pain I would cause, I began to think about God.
Coincidentally (perhaps?), a Jehovah’s Witness was assigned to work alongside me at my job. Since God was on my mind, I began asking him questions about his beliefs. His answers amazed me. It was the first time that I had ever heard religious thoughts presented in a tight-knit logical framework. Everything that he said fit together. Since he had an answer for every question, I kept coming up with more questions. Before long, he was conducting a study with me twice a week in the Watchtower Society’s new (1968) book The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life.
In no time I became a very zealous Witness. After receiving my initial indoctrination and getting baptized, I served as a full-time “pioneer minister.” This required that I spend at least one hundred hours each month preaching from house to house and conducting home Bible studies—actually a commitment of much more than a hundred hours, since travel time could not be included in my monthly field-service report. I kept on “pioneering” until 1971, when I married Penni, who had been raised in the organization and who also “pioneered.”
My zeal for Jehovah and my proficiency in preaching were rewarded after a few years with appointment as an elder. In that capacity I taught the 150-odd people in my home congregation on a regular basis and made frequent visits to other congregations as a Sunday-morning speaker. Occasionally, I also received assignments to speak to audiences ranging in the thousands at Jehovah’s Witness assemblies.
Other responsibilities I carried included presiding over the other local elders, handling correspondence between the local congregation and the Society’s Brooklyn headquarters, and serving on judicial committees set up to deal with cases of wrongdoing in the congregation. (I can recall disfellowshiping people for such varied offenses as selling drugs at Kingdom Hall, smoking cigarettes, wife swapping, and having a Christmas decoration in the home.)
Although we were not able to continue “pioneering” after our marriage, Penni and I remained very zealous for the preaching work. Between the two of us, we conducted home Bible studies with dozens of people and brought well over twenty of them into the organization as baptized Jehovah’s Witnesses. We also put “the Kingdom” first in our personal lives by keeping our secular employment to a minimum and living in an inexpensive three-room apartment in order to be able to devote more time to the door-to-door preaching activity.
What interrupted this life of full dedication to the Watchtower organization and caused us to enter a path that would lead us out? In one word, it was Jesus. Let me explain:
When Penni and I were at a large Witness convention, we saw a handful of opposers picketing outside. One of them carried a sign that said, “read the bible, not the watchtower.” We had no sympathy for the picketers, but we did feel convicted by this sign, because we knew that we had been reading Watchtower publications to the exclusion of reading the Bible (Later on, we actually counted up all the material that the organization expected Witnesses to read. The books, magazines, lessons, and so on, added up to over three thousand pages each year, compared with less than two hundred pages of Bible reading assigned—and most of that was in the Old Testament. The majority of Witnesses were so bogged down by the three thousand pages of the organization’s literature that they never got around to doing the Bible reading.)
After seeing the picket sign, Penni turned to me and said, “We should be reading the Bible and the Watchtower material.” I agreed, and we began doing regular personal Bible reading.
That’s when we began to think about Jesus. Not that we began to question the Watchtower’s teaching that Christ was just Michael the archangel in human flesh—it didn’t even occur to us to question that. But we were really impressed with Jesus as a person: what he said and did, how he treated people. We wanted to be his followers. Especially, we were struck with how Jesus responded to the hypocritical religious leaders of the day, the Scribes and Pharisees. I remember reading, over and over again, the accounts relating how the Pharisees objected to Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath, his disciples’ eating with unwashed hands, and other details of behavior that violated their traditions. How I loved Jesus’ response: “You hypocrites, Isaiah aptly prophesied about you, when he said, ‘This people honors me with their lips, yet their heart is far removed from me. It is in vain that they keep worshiping me, because they teach commands of men as doctrines’ ” (Matt. 15:7–9, nwt).
Commands of men as doctrines! That thought stuck in my mind. And I began to realize that, in fulfilling my role as an elder, I was acting more like a Pharisee than a follower of Jesus. For example, the elders were the enforcers of all sorts of petty rules about dress and grooming. We told “sisters” how long they could wear their dresses, and we told “brothers” how to comb their hair, how to trim their sideburns, and what sort of flare or taper they could wear in their pants. We actually told people that they could not please God unless they conformed. It reminded me of the Pharisees who condemned Jesus’ disciples for eating with unwashed hands.
My own dress and grooming conformed to the letter. But I ran into problems with newly interested young men whom I brought to Kingdom Hall. Instead of telling them to buy a white shirt and sport coat and to cut their hair short, I told them, “Don’t be disturbed if people at Kingdom Hall dress and groom a little on the old-fashioned side. You can continue as you are. God doesn’t judge people by their haircut or their clothing.” But that didn’t work. Someone else would tell them to get a haircut or offer to give them a white shirt—or they would simply feel so out of place that they left, never to return.
This upset me, because I believed their life depended on joining “God’s organization.” If we Witnesses acted like Pharisees to the point of driving young people away from the only way to salvation, their innocent blood would be on our hands. Talking to the other elders about it didn’t help. They felt that the old styles were inherently righteous. But then Jesus’ example came to mind:
And he went on from there, and entered their synagogue. And behold, there was a man with a withered hand. And they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath?” so that they might accuse him. He said to them, “What man of you, if he has one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.” Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand”.… (Matt. 12:9–13, rsv)
If I were truly to follow Jesus, instead of men, I saw only one course open to me. I personally violated the tradition of the elders by letting my hair grow a half-inch over my ears. My reasoning was: How can they pressure a newcomer to get a haircut, now, with one of the elders wearing the same style?
Well, the other elders reacted the same way the Pharisees did when Jesus told the man to stretch out his hand. Scripture says they “went out and took counsel against him, how to destroy him” (Matt. 12:14, rsv). It took them a while to react, but the elders actually put me on trial, called in witnesses to testify, and spent dozens of hours discussing half an inch of hair.
Grooming was not the real issue, however. For me it was a question of whose disciple I was. Was I a follower of Jesus or an obedient servant to a human hierarchy? The elders who put me on trial knew that that was the real issue, too. They kept asking, “Do you believe that the Watchtower Society is God’s organization? Do you believe that the Society speaks as Jehovah’s mouthpiece?” At that time I answered Yes because I still did believe it was God’s organization—but that it had become corrupt, like the Jewish religious system at the time when Jesus was opposed by the Pharisees.
It was what I said at the congregation meetings that got me into real trouble, though. I was still an elder, so—when I was assigned to give a fifteen-minute talk on the Book of Zechariah at the Thursday night Theocratic Ministry School meeting—I took advantage of the opportunity to encourage the audience to read the Bible. In fact, I told them that if their time was limited and they had to choose between reading the Bible and reading The Watchtower magazine, they should choose the Bible, because it was inspired by God while The Watchtower was not inspired and often taught errors that had to be corrected later.
Not surprisingly, that was the last time they allowed me to give a talk. But I could still speak from my seat during question-and-answer periods at the meetings. We were all expected to answer in our own words, but not in our own thoughts. You were to give the thought found in the paragraph of the lesson being discussed. But, after I said a few things they did not like, they stopped giving me the microphone.
With the new perspective that I was gaining from Bible reading, it upset me to see the organization elevate itself above Scripture, as it did when the December 1, 1981, Watchtower said: “Jehovah God has also provided his visible organization.… Unless we are in touch with this channel of communication that God is using, we will not progress along the road to life, no matter how much Bible reading we do” (p. 27, §4). It really disturbed me to see those men elevate themselves above God’s Word. Since I could not speak out at the meetings, I decided to try writing.
That’s when I started publishing the newsletter Comments from the Friends. I wrote articles questioning what the organization was teaching and signed them with the pen name “Bill Tyndale, Jr.”—a reference to sixteenth century English Bible translator William Tyndale, who was burned at the stake for what he wrote. To avoid getting caught, Penni and I drove across the state line at night to an out-of-state post office and mailed the articles in unmarked envelopes. We sent them to local Witnesses and also to hundreds of Kingdom Halls all across the country, whose addresses we had obtained from telephone books at the town library.
Penni and I knew that we had to leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses. But, to us, it was similar to the question of what to do in a burning apartment building. Do you escape through the nearest exit? Or do you bang on doors first, waking the neighbors and helping them escape, too? We felt an obligation to help others get out—especially our families and our “students” whom we had brought into the organization. If we had just walked out, our families left behind would have been forbidden to associate with us.
But, after a few weeks, a friend discovered what I was doing and turned me in. So, one night when Penni and I were returned home from conducting a Bible study, two elders stepped out of a parked car, accosted us in the street, and questioned us about the newsletter. They wanted to put us on trial for publishing it, but we simply stopped going to the Kingdom Hall. By that time most of our former friends there had become quite hostile toward us. One young man called on the phone and threatened to “come over and take care of” me if he got another one of our newsletters. And another Witness actually left a couple of death threats on our answering machine. The elders went ahead and tried us in absentia and disfellowshiped us.
Although it was a great relief to be out from under the oppressive yoke of that organization, we now had to face the immediate challenge of where to go and what to believe. It takes some time to re-think your entire religious outlook on life. Before leaving the Watchtower, we had rejected the claims that the organization was God’s “channel of communication,” that Christ returned invisibly in the year 1914, and that the “great crowd” of believers since 1935 should not partake of the communion loaf and cup. But we were only beginning to re-examine other doctrines. And we had not yet come into fellowship with Christians outside the JW organization.
All Penni and I knew was that we wanted to follow Jesus and that the Bible contained all the information we needed. So we really devoted ourselves to reading the Bible and to prayer. We also invited our families and remaining friends to meet in our apartment on Sunday mornings. While the Witnesses gathered at Kingdom Hall to hear a lecture and study the Watchtower magazine, we met to read the Bible. As many as fifteen attended—mostly family but also some friends.
We were just amazed at what we found in prayerfully reading the New Testament over and over again—things that we had never appreciated before, such as the closeness that the early disciples had with the risen Lord, the activity of the Holy Spirit in the early church, and Jesus’ words about being “born again.”
All those years as Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Watchtower organization had taken us on a guided tour through the Bible. We gained a lot of knowledge about the Old Testament, and we could quote a lot of Scripture, but we never heard the gospel of salvation in Christ. We never learned to depend on Jesus for our salvation and to look to him personally as our Lord. Everything centered around the Watchtower’s works program, and people were expected to come to Jehovah God through the organization.
When I realized from reading Romans 8 and John 3 that I needed to be “born of the Spirit,” I was afraid at first. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that born-again people, who claim to have the Holy Spirit, are actually possessed by demons. And so I feared that if I prayed out loud to turn my life over to Jesus Christ, some demon might be listening; and the demon might jump in and possess me, pretending to be the Holy Spirit. (Many Jehovah’s Witnesses live in constant fear of the demons. Some of our friends would even throw out furniture and clothing, fearing that the demons could enter their homes through these articles.) But then I read Jesus’ words at Luke 11:9–13. In a context where he was teaching about prayer and casting out unclean spirits, Jesus said:
And I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him! (nkjv).
I knew, after reading those words, that I could safely ask for Christ’s Spirit (Rom. 8:9), without fearing that I would receive a demon. So, in the early morning privacy of our kitchen, I proceeded to confess my need for salvation and to commit my life to Christ.
About a half hour later, I was on my way to work, and I was about to pray again. It had been my custom for many years to start out my prayers by saying, “Jehovah God.… ” But this time, when I opened my mouth to pray, I started out by praying, “Father.… ” It was not because I had reasoned on the subject and reached the conclusion that I should address God differently; the word Father just came out, without my even thinking about it. Immediately, I understood why: “God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’ ” (Gal. 4:6, nkjv). I wept with joy at God’s confirmation of this new and more intimate relationship with him.
Penni and I soon developed the desire to worship and praise the Lord in a congregation of believers and to benefit from the wisdom of mature Christians. Since the small group of ex-Witnesses was still meeting in our apartment on Sunday mornings for Bible reading, and most of them were not yet ready to venture into a church, we began visiting churches that had evening services. One church we attended was so legalistic that we almost felt as though we were back in the Kingdom Hall. Another was so liberal that the sermon always seemed to be on philosophy or politics—instead of on Jesus. Finally, though, the Lord led us to a congregation where we felt comfortable, and were the focus was on Jesus Christ and his gospel, rather than on side issues.
Penni now teaches fifth grade in a Christian school that has students from about seventeen different churches. She really enjoys it, because she can tie in the Scriptures with all sorts of subjects. And, besides my secular job, I continue publishing Comments from the Friends as a quarterly newsletter aimed at reaching Jehovah’s Witnesses with the gospel and helping Christians who are talking to JWs. It also contains articles of special interest to ex-Witnesses. Subscribers are found in a dozen foreign countries, as well as all across the United States and Canada. Besides writing on the subject, I speak occasionally to church groups interested in learning how to answer Jehovah’s Witnesses so as to lead them to Christ.
We also provide a weekly phone-in recorded message for Jehovah’s Witnesses. Twenty-four hours a day, JWs can call 508–584-4467 and hear a brief message directing them to the Bible and helping them to disprove Watchtower teachings. Some Witnesses even call during the middle of the night, so that their family members will not observe and report them to the elders. So far, we have received over six thousand calls. At the end of each message the caller is invited to leave his or her name and address so as to receive free literature in the mail—and many do.
The thrust of our outreach ministry is to help Jehovah’s Witnesses break free from deception and put faith in the original gospel of Christ as it is presented in the Bible. The most important lesson Penni and I learned since leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses is that Jesus is not just a historical figure whom we read about. He is alive and is actively involved with Christians today, just as he was back in the first century. He personally saves us, teaches us, and leads us. This personal relationship with God through his Son, Jesus Christ, is so wonderful! The individual who knows Jesus and follows him will not even think about following anyone else:
“A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.… My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:5, 27–28, rsv)
The author is interested in your questions and observations on the material found in this book. You may write him c/o Comments from the Friends, P.O. Box 840, Stoughton, MA 02072.