ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVIST SAYS JESUS WAS A VEGETARIAN (Friday Church News Notes, January 11, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Rochelle Regodon, campaigns manager of PETA-Asia Pacific, says that Jesus challenged the practice of eating meat and that He ate “a vegetarian Passover meal.” Regodon said: “In Jesus’ time, animal sacrifice was largely an excuse for people to eat animal flesh, and Jesus challenged the practice at every turn. He drove the merchants selling animals for sacrifice and consumption from the temple, instituted baptism in place of animal sacrifice, saying that God ‘requires mercy, not sacrifice.’ He also rejected both animal flesh and sacrifice at the Last Supper--a vegetarian Passover meal” (“Pray for, Be Kind to All God’s Animals,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, Dec. 31, 2007). PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and if they want to follow a goofy philosophy that is their privilege, but they will not get away with pretending that the Bible supports their position. The Lord Jesus Christ said that He came to keep God’s Law (Matthew 5:17), and the Law required that the Passover be observed with the sacrifice and eating of a lamb (Exodus 12:1-10). Christ therefore ate the sacrificial lamb every year of His earthly life, including the last. He did not institute the Lord’s Supper and baptism to promote vegetarianism. He instituted these practices to signify His death , burial, and resurrection, to picture the Gospel of our salvation (Romans 6:3-5; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). Christ continued to eat meat and to encourage others to do the same even after He rose from the dead. Two of the last scenes the Bible describes of Jesus before He ascended back to heaven is that of Him eating fish and cooking fish and feeding it to the disciples (John 21:4-13). “And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them” (Luke 21:41-43). But what about those poor little fish, you say? What goofiness!

ARABS LIVING IN ISRAEL DO NOT WANT TO LIVE IN A PALESTINIAN STATE (Friday Church News Notes, January 11, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - According to a new survey among Arabs living in Israel, the majority do not want to live in a Palestinian state, preferring to remain citizens of Israel. The poll, conducted by Keevoon, an Israeli research company, found that only 14% said they would prefer to live under Palestinian rule (“Israeli Arabs: Count Us out of Palestinian State,” WorldNetDaily, Jan. 3, 2008). The reason is obvious, and that is freedom and opportunity. Islamic governments do not allow freedom of religion, speech, press, and politics, whereas the much-maligned Israel does. Islamic governments also do not provide the type of economic freedom and opportunity that Israel does. Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is committed to a misguided U.S.-sponsored plan to work with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to establish a Palestinian state by next year. Israel is expected to give up sections of the West Bank and Jerusalem, even though she owns this land by divine right and has paid for it in recent decades with her blood. A Palestinian state has never been the true objective of the Muslims. They have a Palestinian state already, and Abbas is the head of it, and they have plenty of other Islamic states in that part of the world. The true objective is to remove the state of Israel from the map, but according to Bible prophecy this will not happen. Israel will be driven from her land one final brief time when the Antichrist rules during the last half of the Great Tribulation, but Israel will be converted and Christ will return and defeat her enemies and establish the eternal kingdom promised to King David. “And when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever” (2 Samuel 7:12-13).

JOEL OSTEEN SAYS MORMONS ARE TRUE CHRISTIANS (Friday Church News Notes, January 11, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, December 23, Joel Osteen said that he believes Mormons are true Christians. When Wallace asked whether a Mormon can be classified as “a true Christian,” Osteen replied: “In my mind they are. Mitt Romney has said that he believes in Christ as his Savior, and that’s what I believe. I’m not the one to judge the little details of [Romney’s religion], so I believe [Mormons are Christians] and Mitt Romney seems like a man of character and integrity to me...” (“Pastor Joel Osteen Speaks out on Mormonism,” OneNewsNow, Dec. 28, 2007). Osteen is the pastor of America’s largest church, the charismatic Lakewood Church of Houston, Texas, and it appears to me that either he is incredibly ignorant, incredibly gullible, or incredibly deceptive. Mormonism holds a false gospel and worships a false christ. Official Mormon doctrine claims that salvation is by works and that Jesus is the brother of Satan. Pastor Cooper Abrams III, an independent Baptist missionary in Utah, made the following important statement: “One question that I would ask all Mormons is this: ‘If I accept you as a Christian, will you accept me as a Mormon?’ Would you accept me as a Mormon if I reject Joseph Smith and all the LDS prophets as being prophets of God. If I do not believe in the Book of Mormon or the LDS Scriptures, baptisms for the dead, the temple endowments, the LDS gospel, would you accept me as a Mormon? The answer is obviously, you would not. In like manner, when Mormonism denies the Bible and every Christian doctrine do you think that Biblical Christians should accept Mormons as Christians? Again the answer is very obvious, no we will not. You cannot legitimately claim to be Christians when you refuse to accept what the Bible teaches and what a true Christian believes. I would implore Mormons to honestly and openly examine their teachings about God and Jesus Christ and examine who the Bible defines as being a Christian. There is no benefit in calling yourself a ‘Christian’ when biblically you are not” (Abrams, Are Mormons Christians?, 1996).

BAPTIST MISSIONARIES MURDERED IN PAKISTAN (Friday Church News Notes, January 11, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Arif and Kathleen Khan, missionaries out of Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, New Jersey, were shot to death in August of 2007 in their home near Islamabad (“The Believers,” New York Times, Dec. 30, 2007). The gunman was a Muslim from Waziristan, the tribal region between Pakistan and Afghanistan that serves as sanctuary for Al Qaida. Arif was born in Pakistani but he was an American citizen. He and Kathleen met at seminary and served in two other Muslim countries before settling in Pakistan eight years ago. Arif had previously been jailed for preaching the Gospel. The two people who led the shooter to the Khans’ house were nominal Christians who had once attended Khan’s church. The church’s pastor, Alfred Martin, said: “He was a marked man. He talked of dying for Christ as though it was having a mole removed.”

HUNDREDS OF SCIENTISTS REJECT GLOBAL WARMING THEORY (Friday Church News Notes, January 11, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Hundreds of Scientists,” WorldNetDaily, Dec. 21, 2007: “A new U.S. Senate report documents hundreds of prominent scientists--experts in dozens of fields of study worldwide--who say global warming and cooling is a cycle of nature and cannot legitimately be connected to man’s activities. ... The new report comes from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s office of the GOP ranking member, and cites the hundreds of opinions issued just in 2007 that global warming and man’s activities are unrelated. ‘Even some in the establishment media now appear to be taking notice of the growing number of skeptical scientists,’ the introduction to the Senate report said. ‘In October, the Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics “appear to be expanding rather than shrinking.”’ And there probably would be many more scientists making such statements, were it not for the fear of retaliation from those aboard the global-warming-is-caused-by-SUVs bandwagon, the report said. ‘Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media,’ noted Nathan Paldor, professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. ... The scientists cited in the new study hail from Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, New Zealand, France, Russia and the United States, and defied the idea, being carried forward by various political and environmental agendas, that man’s activities are endangering the future of the Earth through contributions to a rise in temperatures. Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, professor in the department of Earth sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, recently converted from a believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. Patterson noted that the notion of a ‘consensus’ of scientists aligned with the UN IPCC or former Vice President Al Gore is false. ‘I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,’ he said. Former Vice President Gore, of course, has likened skeptics of the global-warming philosophy to ‘flat Earth society members.’ But the Senate report noted the scientists who are expressing a dissatisfaction with such generalizations include experts in climatology, geology, oceanography, biology, glaciology, biogeography, meteorology, economics, chemistry, mathematics, environmental sciences, engineering, physics and paleoclimatology.”

WHY DOESN’T ACTS 16:31 MENTION REPENTANCE? (Friday Church News Notes, January 11, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - There are many who dislike the doctrine of repentance and claim that it is not right to demand that the unsaved repent. These have called me a false teacher, have claimed that I am preaching a “works” gospel, and one of them recently said I am a lost man and that he and his church will pray for my salvation! They point to John 3:16 and Acts 16:31, which only mention believing, but it seems to me that this is a strange way to use the Bible, since it is so obvious from other passages of Scripture that repentance is necessary. Jesus said it is necessary (Luke 13:1-5); Paul said it is necessary (Acts 17:30, etc.); Peter said it is necessary (2 Pet. 3:9). I would say to the issue of why verses such as John 3:16 and Acts 16:31 don’t mention repentance is that proper saving faith includes repentance and proper repentance includes faith. I say this because repentance and faith are sometimes spoken of in Scripture as both being necessary for salvation (i.e., Acts 20:21; Heb. 6:1), while at other times only one or the other is said to be necessary. Salvation is referred to as coming to repentance with no mention of faith in Matthew 9:13; 11:20-21; 21:32; Mark 1:4; 2:17; 6:12; Luke 15:7; 24:47; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 11:18; 26:20; 2 Corinthians 7:10; 1 Thessalonians 1:9; 2 Timothy 2:25; and 2 Peter 3:9. Then in other passages, such as John 3:16 and Acts 16:31, salvation is referred to as believing and repentance is not mentioned. By comparing Scripture with Scripture (rather than isolating Scripture, which is the way false teachers abuse Scripture), I conclude that saving faith includes repentance. As the late evangelist James Stewart explains: “Repentance is included in believing. Howbeit, repentance is not faith, nor faith repentance. ‘He that believeth,’ implies repentance. ‘Repent and be converted,’ involves faith” (James Stewart, Evangelism, p. 48). Pastor Dave Sorenson says: “Saving faith includes repentance. Repentance is not doing anything. It is not a deed, act, work, or rite. Rather, it is a change of the direction of one’s heart. It basically means an attitude of the heart in turning from sin and self and turning to God. That’s what Paul was referring to in Acts 20:21 when he referred to ‘repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Saving faith is the human heart turning to God and then trusting in Jesus Christ. ... Even as there is the part of trusting Christ, there is also the part of turning to Him. That may seem inconsequential, but I believe that here is a spiritual reason they some go through the motions of believing in Christ but are not really born again. They seemingly want the fire escape but there is no interest in turning to God. There is no interest in repentance. They have the attitude, ‘God, gimme salvation, but I’m gonna keep on doing my own thing.’ ... However, if there is no real turning to God from the heart, they have missed the prerequisite for actually trusting Christ” (Sorenson, Training Your Children to Turn out Right, 1995).