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Friday Church News Notes

bksnider@gmail.com — 2009-11-06T08:04:07-06:00

November 6, 2009, Volume 10, Issue 45

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The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, but this does not imply an endorsement. For instructions on how to unsubscribe to this list or to change mailing addresses, please consult the information paragraph at the end.

YOUTH MINISTRY LEADER SAYS THAT THE COOL PARTY JESUS WOULD LOVE “THE BEATLES” VIDEO GAME (Friday Church News Notes, November 6, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Lane Palmer, of Dare 2 Share, an interdenominational youth ministry, claims that Jesus would like the new video game “The Beatles: Rock Band.” Palmer rejoices that by this means “thousands, if not millions, of teens are being introduced to the Beatles magic,” and he can envision “Jesus and the disciples laughing it up over a video game if they had a 1st Century PS3” (“Would Jesus Love “The Beatles: Rock Band?” Dare2Share.org, Oct. 28, 2009). Palmer bases this on a gross misreading of Jesus’ actions at the wedding in Cana as described in John 2. In emerging church fashion, Palmer thinks that Jesus turned water into alcoholic wine and thereby pumped up the wedding party’s level of intoxication-driven fun. He says, “[Jesus[ was hanging out at social events that seriously offended the stuffy stuck up religious folks. They weren’t mad because He went to parties; they were ticked because He had such a great time at them ... the reason Jesus went to parties and hung out with ‘sinners’ was not to judge or condemn them.” The emerging church looks upon this fallen world as a party to be enjoyed and participates freely in the world’s music, art, fashion, movies, etc. It “communicates with” the world’s culture rather than condemning it and has created Jesus in its own image, but the emerging church’s party Jesus is a figment of human imagination. Though Christ was a friend of sinners in that He came to seek and to save them (Luke 19:10) and was involved socially with sinners, attending their weddings and feasts, He was not a “party animal.” He lived and preached righteousness in every situation. He was a friend of sinners even while being “separate from sinners” (Heb. 7:26) because of His absolute holiness. Matthew 11:19 says that Christ was “a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners,” but this was what His enemies said about Him. In fact, He was neither gluttonous nor a winebibber. He was a friend of publicans and sinners not in that He partied with them but in that He loved them and sought to save them. Christ was not “non-judgmental.” He reproved sin. He exposed the rich young ruler’s covetousness (Mat. 19:16-22) and the woman at the well’s fornication (John 4:16-18). Christ often warned about eternal, fiery hell (e.g., Mat. 5:22, 29, 30, 7:19; 10:28; 11:23; 13:40, 42, 50; 23:33; Mark 9:43-48; John 3:36). His very first message was “repent” (Mat. 4:17), and He warned that those who do not repent will perish (Luke 13:3; John 3:36). He called people evil (Mat. 7:11; 12:34). He looked upon people with anger for their hardness of heart (Mark 3:5). He warned people to stop sinning (John 5:14; 8:11). None of this sounds very “cool” in a worldly sense, nor would it be an effective way to keep a worldly party hopping!

How to Lose Your Child Before He is Five Years Old

bksnider@gmail.com — 2009-11-05T06:49:01-06:00

November 5, 2009 (Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

The following is edited and adapted from a message preached by the late J. B. Buffington (1923-2009) at Calvary Baptist Church, Lakeland, Florida, in the early 1970s.

Rearing a family ought to be a thing of joy. You ought to sit down at home and laugh about all the little things that happen. You ought to be happy.

I can talk about teenagers because I have had four of them. My youngest daughter is 23 years old, so I know a little bit about teenagers.

I’ve heard people say, “Everything went along alright until my children became teenagers and then something happened.” But I beg your pardon, that’s not the case. Most of it happened before five years old. That’s why I exhort mothers, “Don’t let anybody be a baby sitter of your children except you and other godly people.” Those first five years, attitudes, security, goals, and many other things are already developed, and they will come into full blossom in teenage years. A child is like a computer. What you put in comes out. You can put something into a computer and pray that something else will come out, but it won’t happen.

Textual Criticism is Drawn From the Wells of Infidelity

bksnider@gmail.com — 2009-11-03T21:40:31-06:00

Republished November 4, 2009 (updated May 19, 2002; first published April 16, 1999) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org)
Through diligent and long research into the subject of Bible texts and versions, I have come to the conviction that modern textual criticism is infidelity. Most of the men who developed the theories of textual criticism in an attempt to overthrow that “tyrannous” Received Text (as some of them called it), were rationalists who denied the supernatural inspiration of Holy Scripture. Men like the Baptist A.T. Robertson and Presbyterian B.B. Warfield (left) did not develop textual criticism, but merely rehashed and passed along that which they received from the rationalistic fathers in this field. The vast majority of the men who have written the influential works on textual criticism in the 19th and 20th centuries are rationalists. The Presbyterian leader Robert Dabney, who stood against theological modernism in the 1800s in America, warned that the evangelicals of his day had adopted textual criticism “from the mint of infidel rationalism.” The same is true today. The vast majority of the textual critics are Modernists or New Evangelicals at best (Fuller Theological Seminary, etc.). Some Bible-believing fundamentalists have adopted textual criticism, but they did not create it.

A wide variety of Bible-believing men from the past two centuries have made the same observation. Let me give some examples.

The Integrated Church and Vision Forum

bksnider@gmail.com — 2009-11-03T08:18:27-06:00

I am writing about the Integrated Church Movement and Vision Forum in one report, because they are so closely tied together. While the Integrated Church Movement is larger than Vision Forum, Vision Forum is probably the most influential part of it.

The Integrated Church Movement (ICM), also called the Family Integrated Church, is defined as follows:

“The family-integrated model jettisons all age-graded ministries. Those who adhere to this model view each family unit (single or married, with or without children) as one ‘block’ that comprises the local church. That is, they view the church as a family of families. They view the church’s purpose as equipping the parents, primarily the fathers, to evangelize and disciple their children” (Terry Delany, “Three Perspectives on Family Ministry,” March 18, 2009).

It is not an organization but a philosophy, and there are many varieties of Family Integrated churches.

THE GOOD

There are many biblically-sound things that are emphasized by the Integrated Church movement.

It emphasizes building godly families and it resists the cultural way of parents abdicating their responsibilities to government schools and church programs.

Friday Church News Notes

bksnider@gmail.com — 2009-10-29T16:16:55-05:00

October 30, 2009, Volume 10, Issue 44

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CHARLES DARWIN’S FRIGHTFUL VISION OF THE FUTURE (Friday Church News Notes, October 30, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Charles Darwin believed that man evolved from the animal kingdom largely by the process of natural selection or survival of the fittest, and he predicted that this struggle would result in the annihilation of less evolved “races” of men. In his 1871 book The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote, “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla” (chapter vi). Thus, Darwin believed that Negros and Australian aborigines are lower on the evolutionary scale than Caucasians, and these “savage races” will soon be exterminated to make the way for a an evolved man “even” superior to Caucasians. That is racism of the most wretched kind, and this “science,” which was the product of the anti-God skepticism in which Darwin was reared, led directly to Hitler’s murder camps. The word “eugenics” was coined by Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton. It refers to the attempt to improve the human “race” by such means as birth control, abortion, and euthanasia. In his book Hereditary Genius, Galton looked forward to a time “when the population of the earth shall be kept as strictly within the bounds of number and suitability of race, as the sheep on a well-ordered moor.” Charles Darwin’s daughter Henrietta and her husband Robert Litchfield were fervent eugenicists. Charles’ son Leonard was the president of the First International Congress of Eugenics. He bemoaned the fact that “the unfit” are no longer killed off by hunger and disease, but “are cherished with care, thus being able to reproduce their kind.” Another son, George Darwin, called for easy divorce and contraception to encourage the survival of the fittest, predating the sexual revolution of the 1960s. A grandson, Charles Galton Darwin, a major figure in the Manhattan Project, was president of the Eugenics Society from 1953-59. Margaret Sanger, the atheist founder of Planned Parenthood, was a fervent eugenicist. Hitler praised eugenics in Mein Kampf, but as Dr. Benjamin Wiker, in his book The Darwin Myth, rightly observes, “The fundamental problem with Darwinism is not that it leads to Nazism, but that it can lead to anything” (p. 147). Darwinism destroys the basis of any true moral code.

The Garden of Eden

bksnider@gmail.com — 2009-10-28T15:53:47-05:00

October 29, 2009 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

The following is excerpted from the new Sunday School course “Fundamental Lessons in the Old Testament,” which is available from Way of Life Literature.

It is impossible for us to imagine in a precise manner man’s condition in the Garden of Eden before the fall, but a little sanctified thinking can doubtless give us a vague idea. This world, though fallen, contains the basic elements of paradise lost.

There was a perfect environment

There would have been an ideal climate, not too hot or too cold, gentle breezes, sparkling sunlight, the clear moon reflected through the earth’s firmament.