Telesales

The telephone preference service, which allows you to avoid being cold-called, expires—it turns out—after a certain period, apparently six months, at which point you have to renew it. You will of course have completely forgotten by the time six months is up, so the first you’ll know of it is when you suddenly get cold-called again, which is what happened to my mother the other day:

“Hallo,” said a chirpy voice. “I’m calling from $company and we sell solar energy products that—”

My mother interrupted him politely. “I’ve already got solar heating, thank you.”

For some reason this upset her caller. “There’s no need to be like that,” he said, affronted.

My mother, surprised, found herself trying to placate him. “But it’s true, I’ve got solar panels installed...”

He would not be reasoned with. “There was no need to be rude,” he snapped.

My mother’s patience saw which way the wind was blowing and made itself scarce for a moment. “Thank you for your concern,” she said icily, and hung up.

Given the sheer amount of abuse I endured when I did my own brief stint in cold-call telemarketing all those years ago—that’s telemarketing, not telesales, by the way; the difference is you’re not reliant on commission, and so can sleep at night—I can confidently state that that man is not cut out for his current line of work.

"No thank you Satan"

Of all the tribulations that have faced Christianity through the ages, surely the greatest has to be the modernisation of the spelling of one of the translations of its holy book:

This particular edition of the Cambridge Bible that calls itself a King James Bible is not genuine. IT’S A COUNTERFEIT! It’s not the Bible of my forefathers!

Here are some of the changes I located: Asswaged has been changed to assuaged. Basons has been changed to basins. Chesnut has been changed to chestnut. Cloke has been changed to cloak. Enquire has been changed to inquire. Further has been changed to farther. Jubile has been changed to jubilee. Intreat has been changed to entreat. Morter has been changed to mortar. Ought has been changed to aught, and rereward has been changed to rearward.

Brother Nic, why get so upset? These are just minor changes in spelling. Well maybe they are, but have you never read “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” You see I believe God wrote the Bible through sinful men. I believe God copied the Bible through sinful men. I believe God translated the Bible through sinful men, and I believe God edited (purified) the Bible through sinful men. So therefore I believe God gave us the exact words in the exact order He wanted us to have them in. If that’s the case then He spelled the words exactly the way He wanted to spell them, and gave them to us in a pure language, and that language is the standard text of the King James Bible. This is the Bible that has stood the test of time without any editing whatsoever ... Once you modernize spelling, change capital letters to lower case letters and add hyphens, you are changing the standard text in order to please modern society ...

One thing a lot of them do is change the spelling of words that end with the letters o-u-r to the more modern American spelling of o-r ... Now the very worst of this battle of o-u-r vs o-r comes when dealing with the only begotten Son of God, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The modern day counterfeiters have changed Saviour to Savior. They have given us a six-letter Savior in place of a seven-letter Saviour. In Bible numerics seven is the number of completeness, purity, and spiritual perfection. On the other hand six is the number of man which is earthly not heavenly. Everyone has heard of 666. It has a bad connotation and is not highly esteemed in Bible numerics.

The seven-letter Saviour is the only begotten Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. The six-letter Savior is the son of perdition, the anti-Christ. He wants to be like the most High (Isaiah 14:14), but not in a good way, but in an evil way. He is not a follower. He’s a counterfeiter. Therefore his final destination is the lake of fire. The new versions, along with the new age movement, and some of the King James Bible counterfeits are preparing the way for this six-letter so called Savior. That's the way he will spell his name, S-a-v-i-o-r not S-a-v-i-o-u-r. No thank you Satan.