A friend of mine just recently told me he tried to hand out some "Chick Tracts" (gospel tracts put out by Jack Chick) in a salvation army soup kitchen, and the director said "those are too tough". This doesn't surprise me, as I stayed in a salvation army shelter for awhile following my deliverance from hard drugs (about a year ago), and I was amazed to find out they hire homosexuals. I was in a salvation army soup kitchen some time ago and a homeless man said "If this is the salvation army, where is the salvation?" (the man is not a christian). I agree completely. You can't just feed people's bodies and not their souls. When the world has to reprove so-called christian organizations, we are in trouble.

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Nigel Holland

Chick tract are often a bit too in your face.

Salvation Army is an anorerxic arm of Christianity. I served as a counselor at a Salvation Army camp one Summer years ago. I was truly ashamed of the church in the way things were handled. I pushed my reset button a number of times hoping to see something redeeming for Jesus' sake and time after time I was let down. I took matters into my own hand and took the Gospel to my kids and they were hungry!! They sat around me as I told Gospel stories and asking questions.

After that Summer I went with a friend I met there to her Salvation Army church. There was a guy in the 3rd row who literally was sleeping through the entire service and nothing was said of it.

John

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John

When I was a kid we had the "this was your life" chick tract. It was scarier than the "Famous Monsters" magazines that I had.

That smarmy guy grabbing his chest having a cardiac with the grim reaper's hand on his shoulder was creepy.

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Todd

I attended some Bible studies in Courtney, BC about 13 years ago at that branch. An elder was over-seeing those studies, and quite honestly he shouldn't have been. He thought he had arrived, but was carnal, worldly, and full of pride. The day I moved, I went to the office with a book I bought authored by Jim Cymbala, (can't recall which one), and left it in the hands of one of the workers saying, "please make sure pastor..... gets this", and then left. I felt sorry for the Pastor that was new at this branch, and felt Cymbala's book would help encourage him through the difficult times i felt he was in for. I also felt very strongly that this particular elder was the devil, masquerading himself as an angel of light; and when I tested his spirit, I found it to be quite true. The crazy thing is, is that his wife seemed to be a saint, and probably was one.

I almost think that the Salvation Army today are universalists, but they probably don't believe the devil will be saved in the end.

Read Catherine Booth's "Aggressive Christianity" (1883 reprint edition), and you'll see just how much that organization has strayed.

Remember the devil is a religious spirit, and to beware of the leaven of the pharisees. God be with you in Spirit and in Truth for His glory and Name's sake.

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Richie

When I was a kid we had the "this was your life" chick tract. It was scarier than the "Famous Monsters" magazines that I had.

That smarmy guy grabbing his chest having a cardiac with the grim reaper's hand on his shoulder was creepy.



Did it snatch you from the fire and saved you. Jude 1:23

"Dread, discouragement, and despair—those were the weights I was carrying back in 1988. I was sixteen at the time and was haunted with knowing God would soon destroy the earth. I was raised in a tight-knit family of hippies, always moving from state to state with little more than the clothes on our backs and a box of Mother Earth News. One night the whole family was hanging out in the laundromat waiting for our clothes to dry when we picked up a worn-out, dated copy of Hal Lindsey’s book The Late Great Planet Earth. At that point we had heard nothing about end times. The book shook us up like nothing before. We already had the survivor’s mentality, being faithful liberal tree huggers. We had consigned ourselves to living on a planet being destroyed by its inhabitants. We scrounged around and hunted down a Good News Bible and started searching to see if that was what it said. After asking different preachers, rabbis, priests, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mennonites (all of whom knew virtually nothing about the future and even less of what we should do about it), we had nearly given over to despair. The future was dreadful and lack of interest among professing Christians was discouraging. The idea of growing a mountain of pot and numbing out to the whole situation was becoming more appealing. We were close to giving up and turning back when God gave us a clue. In fact, it was a custom “sign,” just for us.

At the time, our family was house-sitting in Tampa, Florida while my uncle was undergoing back surgery. One evening I was killing time with my little brother and sisters at a neighborhood playground. Since my uncle’s house was on a military base, we couldn’t have any dope. So I decided to go ride the merry-go-round for a cheap thrill. As I spun around, my eye caught sight of a piece of paper lying in the sand. Around I went and I saw the words, “The Beast.” The next time around I was off the ride and grabbing the small booklet that I would later know as a Chick Tract. It was a very short, illustrated, graphic story of end times. It bore witness with everything we had been reading in the Bible. We didn’t have a single friend, relative, neighbor, or ANYBODY who knew anything about this stuff. But this little book! It proved that we weren’t crazy and that others knew as well.

My dad and I read and re-read the tract over and over and then started looking up the Bible verses listed in the booklet, “The Beast.” It awakened in us a real need to know what God had to say. We became genuine seekers of God. God promised that all who seek him should find him."

— TJ, serving in SE Asia and beyond


http://nogreaterjoy.org/articles/how-a-missionary-was-made/

Quote: "did it snatch you from the fire and save you?"

Absolutely not. That would have been my mother.

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Todd

At a Salvation Army meeting in Mooroolbark in Melbourne, I was chatting with one of the salvation army officers, he said words to the effect of and close to verbatim, "I would never say to a muslim or a hindu that they were wrong, because it might turn out that they are right".

The worst part is that I went to the Major, Pastor, and asked if officers needed to be born again christians. After telling the story I just heard he defended the officer. Although I think this guy was a christian, he had a lot of pride in his little work.

I am sure there are some wonderful christians in the salvation army, I met a few in that citadel?

How do we encourage people to leave the world out of the church? How do we encourage people to soften to the word of God when they see themselves as our leaders?

I know arguing doesn't work, discussion is often fruitless, it has got to be prayer and looking for the opening of the spirit.

I was in a meeting one day and the majors wife got up to speak, I started to turn off thinking how boring this was going to be. Howeever I felt led to listen just on the off chance she had something to say that was christian not just religious.

This was difficult because I did not think anything was going to be profitable, however as I struggled with this I determined that I would listen on the off chance there maybe a nugget of truth somewhere.

As I did this, I had a vision, there was a very soft circle of light about twenty years in diameter on the ground. In the middle was an alter maybe ten or more yards long. I was standing at the edge of the circle, I was transparent or opaque, however there was a patchwork of light and grey and dark patches over me or through me.

The Lord said this was my state, he also stated that the light was very low as I could not have tolerated my own darkness in the light.

Had I not deigned to lower myself to listen ever so reluctantly to this woman, I would not have had this insight as to my own state. As I recall she mentioned a verse that was very important to me at the time, it had to be God.

We need to be careful when we see darkness in the church especially in the leadership that we don't elevate ourselves, i was so full of righteous indignation I could not see the pride and sin of the pharassees that had gripped my heart.

Blessings Oskar

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Oskar Abley