Thomas Watson was one of the most famous Puritan preachers in history, and his seventeenth-century writings are still read across the world today. A highly influential example of Puritan writing, The Great Gain of Godliness is Watson’s study of Malachi 3:16–18.
British Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon bemoaned the fact that he couldn’t find a copy of The Great Gain of Godliness. Spurgeon told his scholars, “This volume would be a great find if we could come at it, for Watson is one of the clearest and liveliest of Puritan authors.” We no longer face Spurgeon’s dilemma, and listeners can now experience this classic text in a way unimaginable to seventeenth-century scholars.
Thomas John Watson, Jr. (1914–1993) was an American businessman, political figure, and philanthropist. He was the second president of IBM, the eleventh national president of the Boy Scouts of America, and the sixteenth United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union. He received many honors during his lifetime, including being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Watson was called “the greatest capitalist in history” and one of “100 most influential people of the 20th century” by Time magazine.
Jim Denison is an AudioFile Earphones Award winner and a Society of Voice Arts and Sciences (SOVAS) Voice Arts Award nominee. He has experience as an actor on a variety of television shows and movies, appearing on Netflix, HBO, the National Geographic Channel, Investigation Discovery, and other networks, as well as appearances and voice-overs in regional and national television and radio ads. A Florida native, he has worked and traveled in many locations within the United States and abroad. For five years he hosted religious programs broadcast from several Caribbean radio stations. He changed careers to voice-over and audiobook narration after forty years of working with Christian churches in Florida, Texas, Trinidad and Tobago, Alabama, South Carolina, Maryland, and Kentucky. Jim and his wife of over thirty-five years, Renee, currently reside in southern Indiana near Louisville, Kentucky. They have two grown daughters. He holds two master's degrees and a doctorate.