Cell Number Goes Public (hoax)

Emails about telemarketing companies calling your cell phone and using up your free minutes are false (see below).

However, I personally hope it is true and that more telemarketers would call. It’s a great witnessing opportunity.

Despite dire warnings about the imminent release of cell phone numbers to telemarketers that continue to be circulated via e-mail year after year, no such thing is about to occur, nor do cell phone users have to register their cell phone numbers with the national Do Not Call registry before a soon-to-pass deadline to head off an onslaught of telemarketing calls. The panic-inducing e-mails (which circulate especially widely every January, since many versions of the warning list the end of that month as a cut-off date for registering cell phone numbers with the national Do Not Call registry) have grown out of a misunderstanding about the proposed creation of a wireless directory assistance service.

Cell phone numbers have generally been excluded from printed telephone books and directory assistance services. However, since the use of cell phones has burgeoned in recent years (to the point that many people no longer maintain landline phone service), several national wireless companies (AllTel, AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Nextel, Sprint PCS, and T-Mobile) have banded together and hired Qsent, Inc. to produce a Wireless 411 service. Their goal is to pool their listings to create a comprehensive directory of cell phone customer names and phone numbers that would be made available to directory assistance providers.

Read more at  Snopes or The National Do Not Call Registry (scroll down to Q #10).

Mark 4:20

Reading Mark 4 this morning, I’m reminded we have but one task…

But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”
Mark 4:20

Nearly every parable I read points to witnessing and making disciples to the glory of God. May your day be fruitful and may God be glorified by the fruit of your labors.

Related post: Our primary task

Misunderstood

Well I’ve confused A.D. again (see:Hrrrrm). I don’t see this as a debate. Because this is the type of conversation where neither of us is going to “win” without total rejection of our identities. I’ve always seen this as an opportunity to simply be better understood. So many times evangelical Christians are seen as hateful hypocrites. In time, even with people who don’t agree with me, they see I am sincerely concerned with their eternal soul and operate from pure intent. And then there’s always the hope that something I write will be used by the Holy Spirit to bring someone to repentance and faith in Christ. With AD, I don’t seem to be any closer than when he first stopped by. In his latest post AD seems to still misunderstand me, my intentions or both.

Absolutely Necessary…

“It is absolutely necessary to the preaching of the gospel of Christ that men be warned as to what will happen if they continue in their sins. Ho, ho, sir surgeon, you are too delicate to tell the man that he is ill! You hope to heal the sick without their knowing it. You therefore flatter them; and what happens? They laugh at you; they dance upon their own graves. At last they die! Your delicacy is cruelty; your flatteries are poisons; you are a murderer. Shall we keep men in a fool’s paradise? Shall we lull them into soft slumbers from which they will awake in hell? Are we to become helpers of their damnation by our smooth speeches? In the name of God we will not.”

Source: Coming Judgment of the Secrets of Men – C.H. Spurgeon