Knock, Knock
Q: What do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with an atheist?
A: Somebody who knocks on your door for no reason at all.

But all the other door-to-door missionaries, you can be sure, will be out to convert you to their religion. Will you be ready to take them on?

You will if you’ve armed yourself with Brian Paul’s four-tape series Knock, Knock. Paul draws extensively from his own experience: He’s served as a Catholic door-to-door evangelist and spent long hours in persuasive discussions with the non-Catholic missionaries who have visited his home. The result is an intensely practical guide to turning the tables so that the missionaries end up being the ones called to conversion. 

Tape 1 offers proven strategies for evangelizing the missionaries. Tapes 2, 3, and 4 give specifics for talking with each of the three groups most likely to show up at your home: Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. The last tape concludes with an “open forum” Q&A session.

If you want to evangelize but are intimidated by the prospect of visiting the homes of strangers, don’t despair. Get these tapes — and wait for the mission field to come knocking at your door.

Four-audiocassette set, $24.99, Basilica Press, 888-396-2339.

The Catholic Challenge Bible Game
What if those doorbell missionaries try to test your Bible knowledge? No problem — if you’ve been playing the Catholic Challenge Bible Game on CD-ROM. With 2,000 cross-referenced questions and answers, it can help you and your family brush up on your scriptural knowledge while enjoying animated graphics, clips from liturgical music and a little friendly competition. (Winners are exempt from one night of kitchen duty.)

The game can be played simultaneously at three levels of difficulty so that children and adults can compete more fairly. Kids will enjoy all the noise: bells, buzzes, trumpets, canned applause. Adults playing alone, however, might prefer to turn off the sound: the clicker gets tiresome, and the sappy voice that praises correct answers (“You are WON-derful!”) grates worse than Barney the dinosaur.

Despite a few debatable interpretations of biblical passages and an occasional significant error in the text — one question, for example, asks about the “women,” rather than the “woman,” appearing in the sky in the Book of Revelation — the game provides a pleasant format for learning more about the Scripture. Check out as well its companion CD-ROM, Catholic Challenge, based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

$19.95 from Divinity Religious Products; 800-669-9200, www.catholicgames.com. 

How Jesus Died: The Final 18 Hours
Ever since the day Our Lady watched and prayed as her Son died, those who want to know the Crucified One more fully have meditated on His passion. How Jesus Died: The Final 18 Hours will enrich such meditation profoundly. 

In this half-hour film, a team of scholars — a medical examiner, an historian, an archaeologist, and an anesthesiologist specializing in pain research — join to discuss the medical, forensic and historical details of Christ’s suffering and death. Award-winning producer/director John Dauer devoted two years to the project to create a carefully researched, reverently presented documentary.

The intensity of the presentation is sharpened by a striking juxtaposition of classical religious art and contemporary special effects, which powerfully convey a sense of the agony of those gruesome eighteen hours. Though the subject matter hasn’t been sensationalized, this film is nevertheless not for the faint-hearted; I found myself wincing more than once as I watched. Even so, it ends on the comforting note of Christ’s Resurrection, with a reading of the scriptural account of the first Easter morning.

That crucifix hanging on your wall holds a world of mystery. See How Jesus Died, and you’ll begin to plumb new depths of its meaning.

35-minute video, $29.95 from Trinity Pictures; call 800-303-9595.

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