The following is another installment of the Friday Church News Notes designed especially for use in churches. It is published by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. For instructions on how to unsubscribe to this list or to change mailing addresses, please consult the information paragraph at the end.

GURU PLANS INTERNATIONAL PEACE PALACE. Friday Church News Notes, October 21, 2005 (Fundamental Baptist Information Service, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Transcendental meditation guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is planning to build an international peace palace on an island off of the eastern coast of Canada. His Community of Global Peace purchased the island off Nova Scotia because they claim it is the most easterly point on mainland North America and the first place on the continent to see the sun rise (“Spiritual Guru Looks to Build Meditation Centre,” The Prince George Citizen, Oct. 17). Maharishi’s followers “believe that enough people around the world practicing yogic flying--achieved by hopping in the air while sitting cross-legged--will create peace and bring a stop to conflict.” Mahaishi was the Beatles’ guru for a short time during the 1960s. “But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness” (1 Thess. 5:1-4).

CHURCH OF SWEDEN’S LITURGICAL COMMITTEE CALLS FOR BLESSING OF HOMOSEXUALS. Friday Church News Notes, October 21, 2005 (Fundamental Baptist Information Service, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The liturgical committee of the Church of Sweden has approved plans to introduce a service for blessing homosexual couples. “The final decision will be made by the Church Assembly later this month, but the proposal won a large majority of the committee” (“Swedish Church Says Yes to Gay Blessings,” The Local, Sweden’s News in English, Oct. 17). Homosexuals in Sweden can form partnerships that are granted most of the rights enjoyed by heterosexual marriage couples. “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of” (2 Pet. 2:1-2).

ROMAN CATHOLIC LEADERS WARN THAT SOME PARTS OF BIBLE NOT TRUE. Friday Church News Notes, October 21, 2005 (Fundamental Baptist Information Service, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Roman Catholic bishops of the United Kingdom have issued a publication warning their people that the Bible is not entirely accurate. The document, titled “The Gift of Scripture,” says, “We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision” (The London Times, Oct. 5). The foreword is written by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of England and Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Scotland. The document says the early chapters of Genesis are legendary and the book of Revelation is not to be taken literally and does not describe the end of the world. The document also warns against fundamentalists who take the Bible as infallibly inspired, claiming that the fundamentalist approach is dangerous.

BIBLE PRINTING PRESS CONFISCATED IN CUBA. Friday Church News Notes, October 21, 2005 (Fundamental Baptist Information Service, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - On the morning of October 9, secret police in the communist state of Cuba raided a home and confiscated a small printing press and Gospels of John. Officials called the Scripture printing operation “subversive and dangerous” (WorldNetDaily, Oct. 18). A pastor was taken into custody for interrogation. “Elsewhere in Cuba, threats of demolition of house churches have never been so high. Recently, the government outlawed them and plans to hunt them down and close them. Many house churches have had equipment such as pews, homemade benches, musical instruments, Christian literature and anything else confiscated by police.”

TWO INTERESTING STATEMENTS ABOUT CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN MUSIC. Friday Church News Notes, October 21, 2005 (Fundamental Baptist Information Service, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following statements were made to me by e-mail, and I am thankful for permission to quote them: “I had this idea a few years back to take used baby diapers, composed of paper and plastic, and recycle them into paper and plastic dinnerware. Of course, they would be completely cleaned and sterilized--shredded, bleached, melted down. It would be extremely environmentally friendly, too. But I would not sell a package...not even one to Al Gore. Why? Because the use of the plastic and paper in diapers have made the substance unsuitable for dinnerware. Much the same, the use of some musical beats and tempos within our culture to promote sin makes those beats and tempos unsuitable for praise and worship. You just can’t clean rock 'n roll up enough to make it good enough for God” (Randy Bissell). “I was a child of the sixties and the seventies and grew up in churches where they encouraged ‘modern’ music to attract the youth. Sure it attracted me but it did not make me a Christian, nor did my non-repentance confession of faith that is encouraged in these world pleasing churches. Praise the Lord, I am now truly born again--freed from a bondage to alcohol, and a redeemed murderer. My solace is in worshipping our Lord Jesus Christ through lovely hymns and Scottish metrical psalms. My dearest moment was sitting at the graveside of Francis Ridley Havergal (not ten miles from where I live--in a gorgeous English country churchyard, where her father once ministered) and singing ‘Take my life and let me be, Consecrated Lord to thee.’ Modern singing with its beat--and off beat--massive sounds and the pop stage leadership is totally manwards and not Godwards. Jeremiah 6:16, ‘Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls....’ The modern neo-evangelicals and dog-barkers ignore this as they know better than God. Let’s read the last sentence of that verse, ‘But they said, We will not walk therein.’ What is plainer than that?” (Andrew Hall).

EUROPE’S NATIVE-BORN ENEMY. Friday Church News Notes, October 21, 2005 (Fundamental Baptist Information Service, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from The Berean Call, Sept. 12: “Last Nov. 2 Theo van Gogh, Dutch filmmaker and descendant of the painter, was cycling through Amsterdam. He was accosted by Mohammed Bouyeri, who shot him six times as van Gogh pleaded, ‘We can still talk about it! Don't do it!’ Bouyeri then cut his throat with a kitchen knife, practically severing his head. Bouyeri was not done. He then took a five-page Islamist manifesto and with his knife impaled it on van Gogh’s chest. On trial now in the Netherlands, Bouyeri is unrepentant. In court he turned to van Gogh’s grieving mother and with infinite cruelty said to her, ‘I do not feel your pain.’ He feels instead glory. Van Gogh had made a short film about the oppression of Muslim women. Bouyeri was acting ‘purely in the name of my religion,’ championing his faith by butchering a filmmaker critical of it. Bouyeri is no newly arrived immigrant. Nor is he, like the Sept. 11 hijackers, a cosmopolitan terrorist sent abroad to kill. He was born and bred in Holland. Likewise, three of the four London bombers were second-generation Pakistani Brits. The most remarkable discovery is that Europe’s second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants are more radicalized than the first.”

ALPHA FOR CATHOLICS. Friday Church News Notes, October 21, 2005 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Alpha program is a charismatic evangelistic outreach that has been used to garner new members for liberal Protestant churches throughout the world. It began at Holy Trinity Brompton Anglican church in London, England, in 1990, and has spread rapidly. More than 7 million people have attended Alpha courses in 160 countries. The program is so shallow that it is acceptable across all denominational lines. In a recent interview with Christianity Today, Nicky Gumbel, who oversees Alpha, said there is even an Alpha for Catholics. The Alpha program has achieved this ecumenical acceptance because it is doctrinally weak. It refers to salvation, the cross, the death of Christ, etc., in such a vague manner that false doctrine is not refuted. It says salvation is by grace, for instance, but it does not say that salvation is by grace ALONE by faith ALONE through the blood of Christ ALONE without works or sacraments. It refers to the Bible as God’s Word in a general sense, but it does not explain that the Bible is God’s inerrant, infallible, supernatural Word that must be reverenced and obeyed in every detail, that the Bible ALONE is the authority for faith and practice. If Alpha were that specific, it is certain it would not be ecumenically popular in this apostate hour. The program also seeks to lead attendees into unscriptural charismatic experiences.

CONCLUSION: Friends in Christ, do not be discouraged by any of this. It is God’s will that we know the times (1 Ch. 12:32; Mat. 16:3) and that we be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. These things remind us that the hour is very late, and we need to be ready for the coming of the Lord. Are you sure that you are born again? Are you living for Christ day by day? “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Rom. 13:11-14).