Have you gotten your free copy of The Great Controversy? I bet you have! But don't confuse the mailed text — subtitled "Past, Present, Future" and "How Will It End?" — with a wasteful phone book. It's actually a "crucial end-time book," says Remnant Publications, the Christian publisher responsible for already blanketing New York City, Washington, DC, and Charlotte, NC, with nearly two million copies of the not-so-light reading material.

Your skepticism is shared by the publisher, who has low expectations for success in the Bay: "San Francisco is not the easiest community to reach," reads Remnant's website. "For years the city has been at the forefront of the gay movement. In fact, 15 percent of San Francisco residents are homosexual."

That's not all, folks: "The area is home to the University of California-Berkeley, a hotbed of liberal ideas. It also contains the affluent communities of Silicon Valley, where high-tech companies like Google and Facebook are changing the world on a daily basis."





How is such a thing possible? The free book, I mean. Well it isn't, really. "The books have been printed, so our immediate need is for $225,000 to cover handling, postage, and fuel costs to deliver these books to the post office," says the Remnant's site. So thanks, donors! Mass production has brought down the cost of the book to 99 cents per copy, reports NPR in Charlotte. 247,000 copies were first sent for free to 10 cities in the Bay Area, and now 750,000 more copies are showing up in mailboxes in San Francisco and Oakland.

The 377 pages of gobbledygook (seriously, give it a whirl!) are the 1858 work of Ellen G. White, a founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and a "prophetess of God" among Seventh-day Adventist members. As with any good doomsday prophecy, don't expect to find an exact date for the rapture, which has been coming soon since forever. But you will find a central text of Seventh-Day Adventism, in which White describes the Great Controversy as being the battle between God and Satan for the hearts of humanity.

The Church, you see, is trying to win a few more converts here. "Only about 20 percent of the people in San Francisco County are affiliated with any Protestant church," Remnant's site continues, "There is only one Seventh-day Adventist for every 672 people in this area. We have a lot of work to do to share the gospel in these cities!"

"The people of San Francisco may not know it, but they desperately need the eternal hope that Jesus offers. That hope is contained in the pages of The Great Controversy. We want to get the message into their hands before it’s too late."

So, see you guys at the book club meeting, or the rapture, whichever comes first!