Weird Religious Tract Number 2: "Strange Events Forecast for 1982"

This undated tract, circa 1976, was printed by Gospel Tract Society of Independence, Missouri, an outfit still active. It deals with one of the many failed 70's predictions about future catastrophes, this one based on  1974 predictions that an alignment of the planets of our solar system in 1982 would result in a number of catastrophes such as devastating earthquakes and killer tidal waves.These wrongheaded surmises started with the bestselling 1974 book The Jupiter Effect by astrophysicist John Gribbin and NASA's Stephen Plagemann. 

In the tract, the Reverend Cyril Hutchison puts a Hal Lindsey-esque twist to the scientists' dire forecasts by suggesting this 1982 alignment might be a precipitating factor behind The Rapture and The Great Tribulation.

The Gospel Tract Society obviously doesn't sell Strange Events anymore but they do offer I'll Be Damned If I Let You Put This Mark On Me, a booklet I look forward to reading and reviewing for the Weird Tracts blog.

The Museum of Weird and Demented Religious Tracts is a project of Les Zazous Postmodern Art Galley of Bellaire, Ohio. Read the Welcome Statement of The Museum here.

For more on the gallery, check out the web site here and the gallery's Twitter handle is @ZazousLes.  The Twitter handle for the museum is @WeirdTracts

The index of tracts for the museum's website is here. 

Contributions of weird tracts to the museum can be made by mail: send your weird tracts to Les Zazous Postmodern Art Gallery 3475 Guernsey Street, Bellaire, Ohio 43906.