Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
While I am attending our GCI International Conference in Orlando, I thought it might be helpful to share with you two websites a fellow pastor told me about. The two sites are snopes.com and truthorfiction.com. Their goal is to help you determine whether information you receive by email is true or false.
Here are a couple of examples I found helpful from snopes.com:
Any time you see an email that says “forward this on to 10 (or however many) of your friends,” or “click to sign this petition or you’ll get bad luck,” or “pass this on and you’ll get good luck,” or “you’ll see something funny on your screen after you send this,” or whatever —
The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of active email addresses to use in SPAM emails or sell to other spammers. Even when you get emails that demand you send the email on “if you’re not ashamed of God or Jesus,” they are email tracking, and they are playing on your conscience. These people don’t care how they get your email addresses just as long as they get them.
Also, emails that talk about a missing child or a child with an incurable disease, saying “how would you feel if that was your child,” are email tracking. Ignore them and don’t participate!
Almost all emails that ask you to add your name and forward them on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of email is, is a way to get names and cookie tracking information for telemarketers and spammers.
Email “petitions” are also a scam. Real petitions are only acceptable if they have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition.
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Remember that prayer is the battleground where we fight the good fight of faith. Let’s encourage everyone to join together in prayer, for we belong to Christ, and by the Spirit it is in Christ that we pray. Prayer and other spiritual activities help keep our hearts in tune with God and remind us of who we are in Christ. He is our all in all, and in him we are eternally beloved of the Father and blessed to share his good news with others.
Love from my family to yours,
Joseph Tkach
