Angus Stewart is brilliant.
Towards the end of part 1 of the video, he establishes a parallel between the situation described in Deuteronomy, where a woman is raped in the field. She screams but no one listened, so she is exempted from guilt, while the man is stoned to death. Angus questions: Where is the second witness to this crime? After all, the woman screams and no one listened so to come to her help. Jackson was truly uncomfortable at this point. All he could mutter was "Well...there would be circumstances..." Angus then asked him, if Jesus, who made reference to the two witnesses rule on Matthew 18, would also concede the same exception as in the case of the woman raped in the field. "That is a question I would like to do to Jesus myself...it's hypothetical", Jackson said.
He also referred to the Elder's manual about the use of circumstantial evidence to establish a sin, such as the case where a man is found guilty of adultery after being seen spending the night alone at the house of someone of the opposite sex or a known homosexual.
Then Angus drove the point home. He asked if there would be any possibility that the Jehovah's Witnesses would be willing to consider likewise "circumstantial evidence" and "opportunity of sexual abuse to take place" as the second witness [he gave the example of a child's trauma] to establish the credibility of a case of an allegation of child abuse. Jackson, after much squirming, conceded that the possibility of a 'second witness' requirement could be fulfilled by circumstantial or corroborating evidence is something the Governing Body is willing to reconsider.
Eden
