Chain Letters, Bulletins, and Forwards

Thank you Prayer Fighters For Christ

As if it isn't bad enough to receive Chain letters in my regular email account, I continue to see tons of them on various online networking communities (such as myspace) via mail and bulletins.

Not only are they annoying, and a waste of time, but they are often accompanied by some kind of curse.

If you don't pass this on to 10 people in the next 10 minutes, then silly susie will kill you in your sleep.

If you don't pass this on, you'll have 7 years of bad luck in relationships.

and my personal favorite....

If you pass this on, Jesus will not let you into heaven! Jesus said that whosoever denies me I will deny before my father in heaven!

So, out of fear , superstition or even guilt, people continue the chain.

But what would the bible have to say about this?

Although The Bible doesn't specifically say anything about chain letters, in principle a Christian shouldn't get involved in passing them on. Chain letters could be viewed as 'soothsaying'...which is like prophesying or fortune telling, and is a non-Biblical act. It's in the same category as practicing the occult, engaging in astrology, being a medium who talks to the dead, etc., which the Bible condemns (see Deut. 18:9-14). It involves using non-Godly spiritual forces to predict the future. For example, Acts 16:16, in which a form of this term appears, concerns someone who had the ability to predict the future, but only by the power of Satan or demonic forces. For if a spiritual force isn't of God, it's of the demonic world instead. There is no "gray" in this regard in the ultimate spiritual reality. Satan can do miracles also, much as God does, although the former is fundamentally far less powerful than the latter.

So, before you send out a chain letter, please contemplate the message you're sending and ask yourself if it is something that compromises or compliments your Christian witness.