Weird Tract Number 134: "A Mark In The Forehead" by W.V. Grant

 Troy Davis writes:

The museum has copies of several works by megachurch pastor and convicted tax evader W.V. Grant (born 1945), all of which are bizarre. Grant first hit my radar when the late James Randi did an exposé of fundamentalist faith healers in the 1980s (Randi received a well-deserved McArthur Foundation Fellowship as a consequence of his investigation that undoubtedly saved lives). Randi found that Grant employed many of the ploys and tactics used by faith-healing charlatans for decades. I remember seeing Grants' faith (non)-healing histrionics on TV until he got into heat with the federal government for not reporting taxable income relating to one of his McMansions. 

"A Mark In The Forehead" is boilerplate end-times porn. It is an undated, 32-page screed that gives hilarious examples of societal immorality that supposedly prove we're in the last generation before The Rapture (when Jebus uses his Holy Hoover to suck up Grant and believers into Heaven, leaving the freethinkers to do some serious doubletakes). Grant blasts nudist magazines, "free love," nude women being used as models in art classes, "ginheads" and anti-Prohibitionists, and homosexuals as being responsible for society's moral downfall. Grant then gives the standard fundy spiel on The Rapture and the Great Tribulation where the un-Raptured must decide whether to take The Mark of the Beast or their ability to buy and sell.

Grant makes some interesting claims:

• "Millions of magazines in America teach to our generation sex freedom, free love, and the abolition of the homes and the ten commandments.! It's reported that thousands of tons of papers here have been printed in Moscow and sent over here." 
• "One church advertised ALL NIGHT SINGING and left the 'g' out, and made it ALL NIGHT SINING. They ran out of tickets and wondered why, until they noticed their mistake."
• "The other night a good Christian lady told my wife and me that a physician tried to put her on night life (running with other men). She said he told her that was the only way she would ever be well." 

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.