In his book 'Church History In Plain Language' - Bruce Shelley makes some salient points about how the gnostics would defend the odd views that they held in argumentation with the Apostolic Church. I was struck by the similarity of these basic argumentations, and the clear use of the identical style of argumentation by the WTS in the past century to defend herself. I shall let the comment speak for itself;
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"Orthodox Christians found the gnostics very difficult to combat. In arguments they always claimed that they had some secret information denied their opponent. Jesus, they said,had passed on this information to the gnostic teachers of his time and hs hidden it from the materially minded Jews who had founded the church. If this line of argument failed, gnostics would appeal to a special revelation from heaven to prove their point. "