NORTH CAROLINA SOUTHERN BAPTISTS VOTE TO EXCLUDE PRO-HOMOSEXUAL CHURCHES (Friday Church News Notes, November 24, 2006, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - On November 14 the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina voted to disallow churches that are sympathetic to homosexuality. The vote carried by a little less than a three-fourths majority. The addition to the association’s membership criteria says: “Among churches not in friendly cooperation with the Convention are churches which knowingly act to affirm, approve, endorse, promote, support or bless homosexual behavior.” This action, though right-sounding in itself, actually is further evidence of the deeply compromised condition of the Southern Baptist Convention at the state and local levels. The Baptist churches in North Carolina that are sympathetic to homosexuality did not become this wretchedly liberal overnight. They have been unscriptural for decades, and yet nothing has been done until now. A church that allows unrepentant homosexuals into its membership is totally apostate. Further, more than one-fourth of the representatives from Southern Baptist churches in North Carolina voted AGAINST the action! For example, Nathan Parrish, pastor of Peace Haven Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, said: “This is unproductive. We should have more conversations with each other rather than cast stones at each other.” This is stated like the true compromiser that Parrish is, but he remains a member of the association’s board of directors. Pastor Bill Sanderson of Hephzibah Baptist Church in Wendell, NC, who raised the proposal, said: “We are people of the Book. We are not willing to compromise.” That sounds like a very bold stand, but in fact he is perfectly willing to compromise because he remains in sweet associational fellowship with the representatives and churches that opposed his proposal. Also, the association will not take steps to discipline any church unless it first receives a complaint from two people who are personally familiar with a church that supports homosexuality. Convention President Stan Welch was quick to say that the association will not act like a “church watchdog.” The Southern Baptist Convention has taken many steps away from liberalism at the national level (and in some cases the state level) in recent decades, but it remains an unscriptural mixed multitude of New Evangelicals and Liberals.

MILLIONAIRE FOOTBALL GODS (Friday Church News Notes, November 24, 2006, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - According to USA Today’s cover story for November 16 (“Million-dollar Coaches Move into Mainstream”) the average salary for a Division I-A college football coach in America is almost $1 million per year ($79,000 per game). One coach in Texas makes $4.7 million. These salaries are ten or more times that of a college professor and many times that of a college president. Commenting on the amazing sports frenzy that has permeated the land, sports psychologist Alan Goldberg of the University of Connecticut said: “Sports [is] like a religion, and the god of that religion that we all worship is the god of winning” (CNSNews.com, August 31, 2001). An extensive survey commissioned in 1983 found that seven in every 10 Americans watches, reads, or talks about sports every day. It was also in 1983 that World Almanac and Book of Facts polled 2,000 8th-grade students to see which persons they most admired. There was not a single name on the list that was not that of an entertainer or a sports figure. In 1982, the famous sports announcer Howard Cosell, while viewing the largest Sunday football game attendance in Texas history, said “the Cowboys are more than a football team in Dallas; they are a religion.” Indeed, professional football has become a religion all across the world. In the USA the chief god is American football, while in most of the rest of the world it is soccer. A person’s god is that which he loves and serves the most. Professional sports is certainly one of the chief idols in the lives of people today, and God hates idolatry. The prophets and apostles of old preached against idolatry, and so should we. What is wrong with professional sports today? It is all about pride, boasting, covetousness, hero worship, superstition, gross commercialization, vain philosophy, gambling, beer drinking, indecent clothing, cursing, rock & roll, and neglecting the house of God, to name just a few of the ungodly things that are intimately associated with professional sports today. When evangelist Billy Sunday turned his back on a successful professional baseball career in 1893, he gave ten reasons for leaving. Reason number two was “Because it develops a spirit of jealousy and selfishness; one’s whole desires are for personal success regardless of what befalls others.”

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH COURT DISMISSES HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE CASE (Friday Church News Notes, November 24, 2006, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - On November 16 a tribunal of the Presbyterian Church USA dismissed all charges against a female “minister” who conducted a lesbian “marriage” ceremony in 2005. Even though the action was contrary to denominational law, the tribunal dismissed the case on a procedural error, claiming that the investigating committee did not bring the charge by the one-year deadline (the charge was filed four days late). As a result “Rev.” Janet Edwards is free to continue her role as an ordained Presbyterian minister. In June 2005 Edwards performed a marriage ceremony for Nancy McConn, a Presbyterian, and Brenda Cole, a Buddhist. “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” (Matthew 15:14). “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:24).

SOUTH AFRICAN PARLIAMENT OKS HOMOSEXUAL “MARRIAGES” (Friday Church News Notes, November 24, 2006, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - On November 14 the South African parliament approved a bill that recognizes homosexual “marriages.” The vote was 230 to 41. The bill now goes to the National Council of Provinces, and it is expected to be approved by that body and then signed into law by President Thabo Mbeki. Well did Jesus liken the time of His return to the days of Lot (Luke 17:28). Lot lived in Sodom and was ‘vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked” there (2 Peter 2:7). The city was given over to homosexual practices, and the day that Lot went out of Sodom God destroyed it with fire and brimstone from heaven (Luke 17:29). 

BEWARE OF ROARING LAMBS (Friday Church News Notes, November 24, 2006, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Roaring Lambs: A Gentle Plan to Radically Change Your World is the title of a book published by the late Bob Briner in 1993. It has become a sensation within the ranks of Contemporary Christian musicians. In May 2000, a Roaring Lambs music album was published by a group of CCM luminaries, including Steven Curtis Chapman, Sixpence None the Richer, Jars of Clay, Michael W. Smith, Michael Tait of dc Talk, Delirious, Charlie Peacock, and Steve Taylor. Bob Briner, who died in 1999, was a sports promoter who got his start with the Miami Dolphins and went on to co-found the Association of Tennis Professionals and ProServe sports Television. The theme of Roaring Lambs is that Christians must get out of their little subcultures and go into the world. Like all heretical books, Roaring Lambs has many good points; but a little poison goes a long way, and Roaring Lambs contains a large dose of poison. The chief error is in the means that Briner proposes for reaching the world. Briner calls upon Christians to stop debating topics such as the inspiration of Scripture and the rapture or anything else the world doesn’t know or care about them. It is basically the Promise Keepers philosophy. Briner further calls upon Christians to stop merely witnessing to the unsaved and instead to reach them by doing what they do. You reach the business man by adopting his goals and philosophy. You reach the sports fanatic by showing him that you are just as enthused about such empty temporal things. Briner suggests, for example, that we have the goal of seeing our sons and daughters become the principle dancers in ballet companies instead of looking upon such things as immoral. Briner says, “… instead of just hanging around the fringes of our culture, we need to be right smack dab in the middle of it…” This is not what we see in the Scriptures. The Apostles certainly did not reach the world by becoming like the world. They reached the world by being different from the world and by preaching the gospel boldly to the world, calling upon the unsaved to repent of their idolatries and to turn to Jesus Christ. See the book of Acts. Briner’s book sounds like something that would have been written by Demas: “For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica…” (2 Tim. 4:10).

THOSE WHO TRULY LOVE CHRIST EXPOSE SPIRITUAL DANGERS (Friday Church News Notes, November 24, 2006, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following are the words of James Henley Thornwell, a staunch Old School Presbyterian preacher who fought against theological modernism in the 19th century. He was weary with the compromisers of his day, who said they loved the truth but were soft in their stance for the truth and refused to boldly withstand heresy. Note his powerful words and his understanding of true biblical love: “To employ soft words and honeyed phrases in discussing questions of everlasting importance; to deal with errors that strike at the foundations of all human hope as if they were harmless and venial mistakes; to bless where God disapproves, and to make apologies where He calls us to stand up like men and assert, though it may be the aptest method of securing popular applause in a sophistical age, is cruelty to man and treachery to Heaven. Those who on such subjects attach more importance to the rules of courtesy than they do to the measures of truth do not defend the citadel, but betray it into the hands of its enemies. LOVE FOR CHRIST, AND FOR THE SOULS FOR WHOM HE DIED, WILL BE THE EXACT MEASURE OF OUR ZEAL IN EXPOSING THE DANGERS BY WHICH MEN’S SOULS ARE ENSNARED” (quoted in a sermon by George Sayles Bishop, author of The Doctrines of Grace and Kindred Themes, 1910).

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).