Psychic Scams Versus Genuine Psychics!

Submitted By: Cherokee Billie
Psychics have been around since the beginning of mankind being called prophets, soothsayers, fortune teller, and many other terms. A genuine psychic can see the potential for the future. Unfortunately over the last twenty years there has been an incredible boom of people representing themselves as psychics because of the money to be made by telling people what they want to hear or else convincing them that without spiritual help they are going to have great misfortune. This has caused psychics to be viewed as not honorable people. So what I want to do is point out psychic scams and how to avoid them, so that you can talk to a genuine psychic.

Free Psychic Readings!

One of the biggest ways to get caught into a scam is advertisements that state, “Free Psychic Readings.” Everyone is looking for a bargain, but when it comes to psychics you should really look for Quality. These advertisements get you to call quickly and once you are on the line you are given so many free minutes and when your time is up you will be tempted to continue with the psychic reading when the “reader” uses one or two intriguing hints like: " I have some really exciting news for you that just came through to me, but unfortunately your free time is up. You would like to continue with the reading, wouldn’t you?" You are then asked for payment and the cost is usually extremely high for every minute that you are on the line thereafter.

It is very likely the “reader” is working off a carefully crafted script in order to ensnare you. How I know this is because I worked for one of the top online psychic companies, when I first started out professionally, and the first thing I was given was a detailed script of what I was to say to keep the reader on the line. I never did follow the script and I was very successful becoming their top psychic. Whatever reason you give not to pay and continue you will be met with a response from the “script” which you will find very difficult to refuse. You cannot say I didn’t warn you!

Do you honestly believe a Clairvoyant/Psychic reader will sit around all day working for nothing! Would you? I do not think so. A psychic has to pay bills just like anyone else and that is the reason that they charge for their services. Only if a psychic is blessed with great wealth can they do readings for free.

Most of these large psychic companies offer free readings because they do not have genuine quality psychics working for them, because they could not afford to pay them and they use people that follow a carefully outlined script and are good talkers.

You Have A Curse On You!

If any psychic tells you that you have a curse on you and they can remove it – hang up the telephone immediately. This person is going to try to fool you into paying large amounts of money to have the curse removed. They will also claim that they can bring back a loved one to you by their special work. No one can make someone love you because each one of us has free will.

Some "psychics" use this type of technique so that the clients become dependant on them in their time of vulnerability. I have had countless people tell me stories of spending thousands of dollars on psychics, to the point of financial ruin. Also, as a psychic in practice for more than 25 years now, and working with others of equal experience, I can assure you, that only under extremely rare circumstances would any psychic work, cost more than two hundred dollars, IF that. These readers have no basis for their suggestions to you, regarding "curses".

The Negativity Scam

Another scam is telling you that you need to have all “Negativity Removed” from your life. That everything in your life will improve once all negative energy is removed from your presence. Often the negativity is coming from your money and if you give them your money they will burn it or destroy it in some sacred way that eliminates the negativity. Again do not fall for this. There are ways you can remove any negativity from your life and you can do it yourself. I send out newsletters where I teach people how to improve their life and spiritually develop their own protection.

These types of so called psychics are known as gypsies in the field because they move from victim to victim. I cannot begin to tell you how many people have called me telling me about spending thousands of dollars to psychics who claimed they could make someone love them, remove a curse, or protect them from someone who has been abusing them. Sad to say, clients have quoted prices ranging from $300 to $10,000 for removing curses. They are using fear and carefully crafted words to make you afraid that if you do not do what they say your life could be ruined.

Another tip I have is be careful with readings when the psychic tells you that you were an important person in your past lives. You might have had incarnations with important roles in society, but it is an absolute that you also had simple incarnations. You might have even been a slave or a simple blacksmith. So be very careful if you hear “You were Nefertiti in Egypt, then you were Cleopatra, and then you were Helen of Troy, you were Mozart, and then you were the Queen of England” That person is trying to get your trust by making you feel important.

How to Spot an Ethical Genuine Psychic

A genuine ethical psychic has no hidden costs, and no surprises. Most genuine psychics give to charities or give some time for free to different organizations. Many also run prayer or meditations groups, or have students in spiritual study with them. A professional psychic relies on readings for their income and they want to make sure that their clients are happy.

A genuine psychic does not rely upon tools such as cards, crystal balls, pendulums, runes or any other outside tool. A truly gifted psychic will receive their answers from their own or their clients spirit guides, higher self and/or angels. Reputable psychics are concerned with the best possible way to serve their clients. It means a great deal to me that I am not just doing a job: I am serving humanity in a meaningful and useful way.

Reputable psychics know that their gift comes from the Divine Spirit, and that they are not in charge of it. A reputable psychic's desire is to guide clients to understanding and truth, which will help them learn to transform the negatives in their own lives. A reputable psychic will never exploit you. A genuine psychic’s gift is natural; they do not encourage clients to think of them as god-like or superior. A reputable psychic focuses only on Truths, not unfounded Fear. A reputable psychic is interested in spiritual education for your own knowledge and growth.

Remember there are true gifted psychics who only want the best for you and will only charge a normal rate for their services and never ask for bonuses or extra money for their work.

So the next time you see the words, “Free Psychic Reading,” think carefully about your wallet and credit cards before you follow through on the advertisement.

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Bishop Eddie Long Controversy Should Not Destroy Faith in Church

Submitted By: Todd A. Smith
Allegations that Bishop Eddie Long, pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta, coerced four males into sexual relationships are riveting the nation. Some have even said if the allegations facing Bishop Eddie Long are true it will rock the entire Black church with catastrophic consequences.

For years, many critics of the church have said that the imperfections of church leaders are what keep them out of the church completely. Many believe if the person delivering the message has skeletons in their closet than why should they listen to the message he/she is delivering?

This approach to worship is totally misguided if you are at church service to serve God and not the pastor.

Pastors like Bishop Eddie Long are simply the messengers, given the assignment to teach the congregation about the Word of God. Should they be role models, definitely. But should we expect perfection? In my opinion, we should definitely not because perfection is not possible.

Church seems to be the only place where people expect perfection, even though not attending church does not really negatively affect the pastor, just the parishioner.

If a journalism professor is not the perfect journalist, should it stop a student from attending class? No, because even though that professor may not be the perfect journalist, he/she can teach someone the skills needed to be a better journalist. If we choose to stop attending class for this reason or any reason it only adversely affects us, not the professor.

If our boss is not doing as good a job as we think he/she should, do we simply stop going to work? No, because that would adversely affect the money that we earn making it extremely difficult to pay our bills and take care of our family. We might begin looking for a new job, but an intelligent person would not stop working because that person knows the consequences.

Furthermore, if we are unhappy about the way the government is spending tax payer dollars, do we simply stop paying taxes? No, because we know that could possibly lead to our incarceration.

So, if we do not stop doing those things because the people around us are not perfect or we disagree with them, why should we stop attending church because pastors like Bishop Eddie Long are imperfect creations like all of us or we disagree with some of their actions?

Additionally, we should not rush to judge Bishop Eddie Long until the cases have been adjudicated and we should not rush out of the doors of the church when we discover the imperfections of the church. The Bible describes the church as the “people of God,” and all people whether they attend worship or not are far from perfect.

Bishop Eddie Long stated in his address to parishioners of New Birth, that he is under attack. I will take it a step further and say that the entire church is under attack from people on the inside as well as people on the outside.

Whenever the church is mentioned in the media, the coverage usually centers on a controversy and not the countless acts of charity and compassion that congregations engage in on a daily basis.

Ralph Douglas West, pastor/founder of The Church Without Walls in Houston, often says the church does enough community service and goodwill to fill every news cycle every day. It is just unfortunate, that critics only pay attention to its bad press and not its benevolence.

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What Really is the Third Secret of Fatima

Submitted By: Robert Benjamin
The 20th century is considered to be the most fateful of all centuries with its tragedies in two world wars, the rise of communism as well as the triumphs in technologies that remain unparalleled against all of man's existence in recorded history. It is also a period that saw the most prophetic apparitions ever made in a small Portuguese town of Fatima in 1917.

Much of the visions contained in three distinct secret messages known as the Three Secrets of Fatima have been revealed, notable the first two messages which predicted the 2nd World War and the doctrinal threat of Communist totalitarianism that engulfed Russia.

These have been committed to paper by the lone surviving visionary, Sister Lucia Santos and deposited in the Vatican at the time. They were revealed by the Pope John Paul II in 2000 though many dispute that the third secret was accurate.

Not as Apocalyptic as Speculated Excerpting the text of the 3rd secret, we can read and see that while the message provides some disturbing imagery, it fails to live up to all the speculated third world war, church apostasy, or end of the world scenarios that the secret has created in the minds of many.

"...at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: 'Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense light that is God: 'something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White 'we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God."

Controversial Secret:

The Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) declared that the third secret must be a disappointment to many expecting more revealed mystery or dire prediction. The revealed third Fatima secret has since spawned controversy as many critics argue it is not the original one as what was revealed was handwritten on 4 pages instead of the original single page revelation that contained the words of the Blessed Virgin and not from a mere narrative description.

It also came originally in the form of letter to the Bishop of Leira which the revealed handwritten secret was not and should have contained information about the Apocalypse, and the Satanic infiltration of the Catholic Church. The Vatican remains firm that nothing of that sort is contained in the 3rd Fatima secret.

There is a website that describes the Third Secret of Fatima and numerous other topics of interest such as conspiracies, secret technology, ufos, secret weapons research, bible end times predictions and many other such subjects, this website is called: The Great Deception and it may be found at this url: http://www.great-deception.com

You may publish this article in your ezine, newsletter or on your web site as long as it is reprinted in its entirety and without modification except for formatting needs or grammar corrections.

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Childs Choir Music

Submitted By: Howard Gottlieb
I once had a friend that wanted to help out any way that she could at her church. Let’s just say that it didn’t take anyone in the church long to realize that they had hit pay dirt. They called her in and asked her if she would be in charge of one of the most important positions in the church – Director of Childs Choir Music. How could she refuse? After all this was one of the most important positions, and how hard could it be to get children to sing songs.

Her duties, she found, including setting up their first choir fundraiser and helping with all aspects of choir including song selection and recruiting. As in many cases the job of the volunteer can cover many different areas that are not anticipated. When it comes to choir, though, there are so many fun things to do to make it enjoyable for the kids.

After all, they naturally sing songs. (By the way, did I mention that my friend was not married and does not have kids)? After my friend researched the idea of childs choir music, she began to realize that she may have bitten off more than she could chew. First of all, the easy part was recruiting children and scheduling practices. That didn’t seem too hard, just make an announcement in church and place an ad in the bulletin announcing the times and dates of practice.

Once she had some willing participants, she started to look at some songs that were appropriate for the kids. This started to get a bit more difficult, because she didn’t have any musical training! She couldn’t read a sheet of music. This is where I came in and offered to help her find something suitable. Not the simple, Jesus Loves Me, or This Little Light of Mine, but something that can show off the kids musical talents. We settled on Gladsome Light. Did I mention that I did not have any kids either? Anyway, after a few practices, of going through the music with the kids, we became a bit frustrated. First of all, the kids couldn’t read. I forgot, four years olds are not able to read anything! After we had them memorize the words, they couldn’t remember the melody. With a scheduled performance looming on the horizon, we bribed them with anything that made sense, stickers, toys, candy etc. Still to know avail- it sounded like a train wreck in the middle of the night. We thought about having them lip sync, but we thought that might be a bit unethical for church. So what did we do, we had them sing Jesus Loves me and This Little Light of Mine.

So the moral of this story is that when you volunteer for something, make sure that you have a friend that is smart enough to talk you out of it. Or understand that there might be more to the job than you first expected so keep your eyes wide open when raising your hand.

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Using The Internet For God

Submitted By: Joann Hicks
Do you have a Christian product, service or message that you would like to inexpensively advertise and distribute around your town or all over the world?

Would you like to invite more people in your city to your church?

Would you like to find out how to inexpensively write a Christian book and distribute it around the world?

Would you like to reach around the world and help people come to know Christ better?

Would you like to learn inexpensive ways to powerfully support missionaries or help feed hungry children?

Using the Internet for God will tell you how to tap into the power of the Internet and use it for God's glory.

Most people do not have the funding to do a nationwide television, radio, newspaper or magazine ad campaign.

The Internet is a tool that most people can afford to use to get to word out about their Christian products, services and causes.

The problem is, most people don't have a clue about how to use Internet effectively as an advertising or distribution tool.

Fortunately, a Christian owner of an Internet marketing company has put together this easy to use guide about how to use the Internet simply and powerfully to get the word out about important Christian products, services, causes and messages.

From this source you'll learn how to:

Put together an inexpensive web site where people can learn about or order your Christian product, service, cause or message.

Learn how to write compelling written sales copy that actually gets people to take action after they read the content on your site.

Learn how to get lots of targeted traffic to your web site (it doesn't make a lot of sense to have a web site if the right people are not going to visit it).

Learn how to get a free Web site for your church or for a missionary.

Learn the same techniques that professional Internet marketers use to get more customers to their sites (at least the ethical ones).

Learn some fund-raising techniques that tap into the power of the Internet.

Learn how to write your own eBook and offer it for sale all around the world using the Internet (it is a lot easier to become a Christian author than you think.

People all over the world are expanding their spiritual and religious understanding through the Internet. There is a ever increasing cache of religious and spiritual resources available online. People can find resources for all religious beliefs from Christianity to Judism. The internet can help individuals who wish to deepen their own spirtual knowldege and lives as well.

Every day Over 2 million people search the internet looking for Christian resources for help with nowhere else to turn, people are turning to the Internet in astonishing numbers trying to fill the emptiness inside. The Internet is the resource tool that allows you to meet them at their crossroads when they are most ready to listen.

The Internet does level the playing field to a great degree if you would like to reach the world with a message, product, service or cause.

With the help of this guide, you can learn how to reach the world For Christ with the power of your PC.

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