Man, You Don’t Know Jack!

Grace and peace, Saints.

Chick tracts have been around for decades now.  The first time I saw a Jack Chick tract I was around sixteen years old.  My father, who was an associate pastor, ran an electronics repair shop where he also sold Christian literature.  Once, while helping him to clean the shop, I picked up a comic book that told the story of a former Spanish Jesuit priest who exposed the plans of the Jesuit Order and the Roman Catholic church to take over the world.  I was to learn later that this man’s name was Alberto Rivera and his story was told in the “Alberto” series of comic tracts by Chick Publications.  I never forgot that tract.

Chick tracts are great witnessing tools.  As a matter of fact, it was the Chick tract, This Was Your Life that led to my salvation.  Chick tracts use scripture references from the King James Bible, which I personally believe is the inspired Word of God, and they apply doctrine accurately in most cases; most, I say, but not all.

Besides being great evangelism tools, Chick tracts are great for learning scripture, especially for kids.  They love the cartoons, and I always left an open box of tracts on the dining room table for my kids to read, and I would encourage them to look up the Bible verses they found in the tracts and to try to commit them to memory.  

I have passed out thousands of Chick tracts both in the U.S. and overseas for over seven years now, and I trusted them.  So imagine my surprise when I saw this in the Chick tract, Why Is Mary Crying?

Notice the hand of the angel.  It is painfully obvious that the curious position of the middle fingers means something, and that something is not Christian.  If you read our post Occultism and the Christian Church, you understand that this hand sign is in widespread use these days, especially in Hollywood. Opinions are mixed as to what it means.  Some say it is the “M” for Mason, while others say it is the “El Diablo” hand sign with the middle fingers straightened rather than curled. But I think it is actually a sign for the Antichrist, “the number of the Beast.”  And that number is 666.  

You see, the Greek (as well as Jewish) letter that corresponds with the number six is “V.” So the Jewish and Greek numeric counterpart to VVV is 666, the number of the Beast. Now notice that the fingers of the angel form three Vs.  Interesting, is it not?

UPDATE: We now understand that this hand sign is related to the worship of Semiramis, the wife of Nimrod and queen of ancient Babylon.  Semiramis has also been called Ishtar, Ashtoreth, Isis, Lakshmi, Diana of Ephesus, and many, many other names.  Today, she is most commonly known as the Virgin Mary.  

Read more about the Cult of Mary here.

This hand sign is growing in popularity, especially in Hollywood.  Among those who have used this sign are:

Regis flashes occult sign

Any Winehouse pays homage to Satan

Whitney Houston displaying occult hand sign

Needless to say, I was somewhat shocked at this development and, even though I knew something was not right, I shrugged it off and decided that perhaps—just perhaps—I was not seeing what I was seeing.  That was, until I came across this page in the same tract:

Mary displays a curious hand gesture

Notice the middle fingers of Mary’s hand.  Aren’t they in the same position as the angel’s and the others’? Can this be purely coincidental?  I think not.

Now, there have been many who have attacked Jack Chick for various reasons, and I have always defended him, because the attacks have always been against his theology.  Only one person I know of has ever attacked Jack Chick’s person, and that person alleged that Jack doesn’t give credit for other artists who do the illustrations on his tracts, but instead always uses his own name.  Whether this is true or not, I cannot say.  The point is that no one, to my knowledge, has ever accused Jack Chick of being anything other than a Bible-believing Christian even if they disagreed with his theology.  

Never before have I ever heard it alleged that Jack Chick was into the occult.  But if he is not, then why this obviously occult hand sign?  If he does employ other artists to do the illustrations, then it could very well be that someone else is responsible for these occult images.  But since Jack Chick’s name is on the tract, the responsibility ultimately lies squarely with him.

I prayed for months about whether I would share this with the body of Christ, and I finally decided I would for the following reasons:  

For one, Satan is very cunning, and in many cases, he controls both opponents.  For instance, If he wants to make a false prophet look authentic, he will set up an enemy for him who will attack him incessantly.  Christians will believe that the enemy is attacking the person because he is speaking the truth, and they will come to his defense, thus establishing his legitimacy.  

Satan will also direct a false prophet to attack a known enemy of the Christian church (such as the Roman Catholic church) to make that person look legitimate.  When Christians see the false prophet attack the enemy, they will believe he is a man of God standing up against the enemy, while, in all actuality, he is controlled by the enemy.  

At this point, I should add that this hand sign seems to have some connection with the Roman Catholic church, as one can clearly see in the images below:

The Virgin Mary flashes an occult hand sign

A Catholic saint flashes an occult hand sign

Pope Benedict XVI flashes satanic handsigns

Coincidence?  You must decide that for yourselves.

Another reason I decided to release this information is because I witness to Roman Catholics, many of whom are into the occult.  If I were to give this tract to a Roman Catholic who is practicing the occult and he sees this hand sign and recognizes it, he may come to think that the Christian church is just as corrupted as the Roman Catholic church.  This could drive this person away from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I have already given out quite a few of these tracts to my Roman Catholic neighbors and God only knows how many of them saw this and rejected the Gospel because of it.  If you are a person who also witnesses to Roman Catholics or was considering doing so, you now know not to use this tract to witness to them.

In case you hadn’t noticed, Satan’s followers are getting ever bolder flashing these Satanic hand signs.  Maybe five or ten years ago no one would have noticed this, but, because Satanic hand signs are everywhere now, the chances of it being seen have increased many fold.  Who knows if it were Satan’s plan all along to display this hand sign in a prominent place in this tract, where it would be recognized by the body of Christ.  Since it is Satan’s aim to destroy Christianity and all Christian ministries, Satan could use this tract as an instrument to destroy the faith of Christians in one of the few ministries that was thought to be faithful and true to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  This could even destroy the faith of some Christians.

With me revealing this information to you, however, the chances that your faith will be destroyed are almost zero; for you see, I am not going to tell you to stop using Chick tracts.  That is because Chick Tracts do contain the Gospel and they do win souls.  As I said, it was partly due to a Chick tract that I came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Chick tracts work.  However, now that we see that there is antichrist imagery in at least one Chick tract, we should be careful to closely examine any tract we get from Chick Publications to make sure that there are no occult images.

We should also check to make sure that the doctrine is sound, which brings me to an allusion I made earlier: that is, that Jack Chick’s doctrine is not always sound.  Chick Publications believes in a pre-Tribulation Rapture, which is totally inconsistent with Scripture.  And not only is a pre-Trib Rapture unscriptural, but Rapture theology in general, as the Bible only teaches a Resurrection.

One error of Rapture theology is that it purports that Christians will all just disappear inexplicably, and Jack Chick espouses this theology.  This image is from the tract, Things To Come:

Things to Come

“The Rapture is coming.”  This is a good example of faulty theology.  The Bible does not teach a Rapture, which only involves the living, but it does teach a Resurrection, which involves the living and the dead, both of which will go up to Heaven to meet Jesus:

“Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them (the dead) in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air..” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

The Rapture is the first lie promoted in this tract.  The second is that the living, who “are alive and remain” at Jesus’ coming, will disappear “in the twinkling of an eye.”  This is false.

Our bodies are shaped in iniquity from original sin.  When we were converted, we became new creatures in the spiritual sense, but our bodies are still sinful and cannot get into Heaven (1 Corinthians 15:53-54).  The dead saints, therefore, will get a glorified body without sin, and the living saints will be changed in an instant, and their sinful bodies glorified.  This will be done so that we will be permitted to come before a holy and sinless God.   Therefore, 1 Corinthians 15:52 does not say that the living saints at Jesus’ coming will disappear in the twinkling of an eye, but that they will “be changed” in the twinkling of an eye.  This is the entire passage:

“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we (the living saints) shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52).

It is clear that this passage is talking about a resurrection and not a rapture, for it involves the living and the dead.  And as one can plainly see, the living will be changed in the twinkling of an eye: not disappear.  How Jack Chick can misinterpret a passage as clear as this beggars the imagination.  This is what the apostle Peter meant when he said that the false prophets wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16).  It is a perfect example of how taking a word, phrase, or verse out of context can lead to a faulty interpretation of Scripture and even heresy.  

Rapture theology also teaches that Christians will miss the coming great persecution of the Church by the Antichrist during the Tribulation.  Besides being patently false, this teaching is very harmful, because it promotes selfishness and gives Christians a false sense of security.

So as you can see, at least one Chick tract contains occult images in a Christian context, which is blasphemous, and at least one other espouses a faulty doctrine.  What does that mean for those Christians, such as myself, who use Chick tracts?  I will tell you this.  If you can find a better evangelism tool that doesn’t have these issues, by all means use it. But if you cannot, my advice would be to choose your tracts very carefully and examine them under the lens of the Holy Spirit.  A Chick tract introduced me to the Gospel and I got saved.  They do work.  That said, it would behoove the discerning Christian to take care when deciding which tracts to use in his evangelism efforts.  It could make the difference between winning a soul to Christ or consigning a soul to the Pit.

Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.

The Still Man