Secret Service confiscates more Gospel tracts

Secret Service confiscates more Gospel tracts
Los Angeles agent says messages should be in black-and-white
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Posted: January 12, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

U.S. Secret Service agents, who earlier confiscated Gospel tracts from Christians in Texas and Nevada because they carry a message of salvation and an advisory that they are not legal tender even though they look like a $1 million bill, now have taken the same tracts away from a Los Angeles man.

Jim Thomas, who with his wife Charlene had just finished an evangelism training program at their church, told WND he was handing out the tracts near an escalator at a downtown Los Angeles mall "and everything was going very well."

Then, he said, a man approached him and told him that "there's a problem here."

He introduced himself as a Secret Service agent.

"He began to ask me questions, like 'have you read the rules and regulations about bills similar to currency?'" Thomas said. "So he just kind of informed me what I could do to be in compliance."

He said the officer suggested the bills be larger or smaller than regular currency, or be printed in black-and-white. Then he took Thomas' stack of the tracts, which look like a $1 million bill but have a 160-word Gospel message and other disclaimers.

The tracts are produced by Ray Comfort, an evangelist whose Living Waters Ministry in Southern California has been inundated with requests for them since the first Secret Service confiscation happened last year.

As WND reported at the time, the controversy began June 2 when three agents visited the Great News Network office in Texas and told a staffer to hand over the tracts.

That dispute currently is pending in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a case brought by the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy.

"I think someone who is partially blind may think it's a genuine bill if it's given to them at night in the fog," Comfort told WND. "Any bank teller who tries to give change for a million dollar bill should not be a bank teller."

He said the whole point of a tract is to get a reader's attention and carry a message, and that's what this does.

"It makes people laugh. Even if it wasn't a Gospel tract, I'd give them out, because they give a good feeling," Comfort said.

WND messages left for the agent, who identified himself as Jess Martinez, weren't immediately returned. ...
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