Battle Cry July/August

During my indoctrination into the Aggie Church [Assemblies of God] at a younger age, I was exposed to Jack T. Chick tracts and indeed I used them in my "witnessing" to bring people into fundamentalism christianhood. I was unaware of some of the controversies involved and would have dismissed it as "the work of Satan" if I had known. I had never heard of Alberto Rivera, Elaine Moses and her cohort Rebecca Brown [a.k.a. Dr. Ruth Bailey], John Todd, or Bill Schnoebelen. I did know and read the works of Charles Finney and Hal Lindsay. [By the way Hal, what happened to the rapture occurring in 1981?]

I look back on that period of my life with mixed emotions. The problems that I'd had fitting in socially were not alleviated by my forays into pentecostalism. Nor were my fantasies about women relieved. Two things did happen during that time that may have ultimately saved my life. It was a church member who called my father and blew the whistle on my mother's physical abuse. And I took a break from drinking and using street drugs. It was during that break that I was exposed to an accurate definition of addiction. I remembered that definition several years later when I was seeking a way out of my own active addiction.

Husband [non-theist] has an obsession with Jack Chick tracts. To my chagrin, he dropped-- I think it was-- 15 bucks on a box of them and now he is on the list to receive a copy of each new freebie as it comes out. Additionally, he gets a bi-monthly copy of Jack Chick's little 16 page "Battle Cry."

Jack Chick has been a long-time advocate of conspiracy theories regarding the Vatican, the Illuminati, and witchcraft. Via contact with the late Alberto Rivera and the now convicted rapist alleged former satanic high priest and Green Beret John Todd, Chick has made various claims in his tracts that are not historically accurate. Among the claims are that the Vatican orchestrated the founding of the Muslim religion and the Holocaust, and that an unholy triad of witches, Masons, and Catholics [some being Jesuits a.k.a. Illuminati] have infiltrated all or most christian churches. Sucks to be christian these days. According to Chickology, one can't trust the cops or the folks in most christian churches these days.

Jack Chick has [wisely] chosen to distance himself from the now dead Elaine Moses and her controversial defrocked physician cohort Ruth Bailey/Rebecca Brown. Both have claimed to be witches who converted to Christ. Brown authored a book about curses on christians and others. Elaine Moses claimed to have literally married Satan [in a white tuxedo] and then supposedly traveled all over Europe and the U.S.A. on behalf of some huge satanic network. Brown was brought up on charges [as Dr. Ruth Bailey] for doing things like praying over patients for deliverance from demons, diagnosing non-existent illnesses in patients, claiming special knowledge of healing including sharing Moses' leukemia very much in the fashion of pranic healing but with the twist of actually [allegedly] coming down with Moses' leukemia herself, and injecting people with non-medically necessary controlled substances for treatment of the non-medically existing diseases.

In the July/August issue of Battle Cry in the editorial on page 15-16, Jack Chick claims that the [now dead] Alberto Rivera as a [supposed] Jesuit was told that Pope John Paul II [also dead] in pre-papal days of lusting after the young boys of the factory workers he was [supposedly] assigned to investigate priests who were assigned to minister to Polish factory workers. Alberto Rivera was no Jesuit, despite his pretensions otherwise. He was a bit of a con man and a fraud. Many christian bookstores removed the Alberto comics when he was found out. Chick touted the action as a victory for the Vatican and Satan. In the editorial, there is an oblique reference to the controversy.

Also in this issue are advertisements for various books-- including one by anti-Mason and alleged former wiccan turned satanist Bill Schnoebelen-- witnessing and tract-passing tips, a summary of a lawsuit allowing a bible study outfit to send inmates who request it material [note: an outcome which I believe is correct according to the described circumstances], and references to the sexual abuse scandal within some catholic churches in California [continuation column on page 7 subtitled "Homosexual Subculture"], and a few other tidbits.

The back cover features a cartoon frame equating Islam's promise of peace with chopping the heads off of the infidels. A tiny chick in the right-hand corner says, "Ouch" much in the fashion of Spike the dog in some of the tracts.

I found the editorial in the July/August issue of Battle Cry to be particularly abhorrent. Then again, Jack Chick is known to be anti many things and to use inaccurate or made-up information as the basis of the biographical stories featured in his tracts.

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http://faith.propadeutic.com/authors/fundamental

http://www.squidoo.com/garydale/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Rivera

http://www.monsterwax.com/chicktapes2.html

http://www.catholic.com/library/sr_chick_tracts_p5.asp

http://www.chick.com/reading/comics/0112/indefense.asp

http://members.aol.com/monsterwax/Contents.htm

http://www.witchvox.com/protection/kerr_chick1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Brown

http://members.tripod.com/monsterwax/brown1a.html

http://www.kt70.com/~jamesjpn/articles/closet_witches.html

http://www.holysmoke.org/wb/wb0073.htm

http://answers.org/satan/brown.html

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/2919/brown.html

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

http://www.fecundity.com/pmagnus/darkdung.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Todd_(evangelist)

http://www.kt70.com/~jamesjpn/articles/john_todd_and_the_illuminati.htm

http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/todd00.htm

http://www.skepticfiles.org/mys3/jtc-jtc.htm

http://www.masonicinfo.com/schnoebelen.htm

http://www.holysmoke.org/wicca/bills00.htm

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=cabc&c=whs&id=4355