In The Betrayal, Merritt charges the current Southern Baptist leadership with ten areas of preaching and practicing "Another Gospel."According to Merritt, a few Southern Baptists leaders devised a scheme by which they could gain and perpetuate their control over other Southern Baptist individuals, churches, agencies, institutions and boards of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The means by which those men accomplished their objectives was a deceitful distortion of the meaning of the term "inerrancy," a theory of biblical inspiration. Merritt reviews this theory in detail, emphasizing that many qualifications of what an error is not are necessary for the Bible to be described as inerrant.

The current leaders of the SBC have led Southern Baptists away from sincere and pure devotion to Christ. Merritt proposes strategies for churches that would free them from the control of the current leaders and restore them to freedom in Christ and unity in fellowship, service and missions.

John W. Merritt served as a Southern Baptist missionary for 34 years. He is retired and lives with his wife, Elizabeth near Asheville, North Carolina. They have three sons and two grandchildren.