September 25, 2009, Volume 10, Issue 39

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.

“HORRORCORE” RAPPER CHARGED WITH MURDER (Friday Church News Notes, September 25, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Richard McCroskey, a “horrorcore” rapper, has been charged with the first degree murder of a pastor. McCroskey, who performed under the very appropriate name of Syko Sam, sang of murder, mutilation, and mayhem to a brain-numbing backbeat. In a song called “My Dark Side,” McCroskey sang, “You’re not the first, just to let you know. I’ve killed many people and I kill them real slow. It’s the best feeling, watching their last breath. Stabbing and stabbing till there’s nothing left.” The rapper is charged with killing a Presbyterian pastor in Virginia, and authorities said he will probably be charged with the murder of three other people, including two children. Horrorcore rap music is influenced by popular but vicious movies such as Child’s Play and Halloween. It focuses on Satanism, cannibalism, murder, suicide, and rape. A 2004 BBC documentary entitled Underground USA said horrorcore rap “has a massive following across the US.” The annual horrorcore “supershow” is rightly called “Wickedstock.” In spite of the vile nature of their “art,” horrorcore promoters have the audacity to claim that it is innocent. Andres Shrim, owner of Serial Killin Records, said that people “shouldn’t judge McCroskey by what they see on his website or hear in his music” (“US Rapper Charged,” AP, Sept. 21, 2009). Sure, he is a really nice, pure-hearted guy who just happens to enjoy singing about torturing people to death. The “entertainment” industry will be held accountable by Almighty God for its vile influence on society. The genres of science fiction and horror carry the individual into fictitious worlds without God, and this is very dangerous. The mind is the great spiritual battleground. The devil is called “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2) and the ruler “of the darkness of this world” (Eph. 6:12). He is walking about seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). The believer finds the will of God by “renewing the mind” (Romans 12:2) and “casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). The Bible warns that those who do not “retain God in their knowledge” are given over to a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28), because anything that takes the place of God in man’s heart and life is an idol, and God hates idols (Exodus 20:3).

OBAMA APPOINTEE BELIEVES EMBRYO “JUST A HANDFUL OF CELLS” (Friday Church News Notes, September 25, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Cass Sunstein, who was appointed by Barack Obama as a “regulatory czar,” believes that an embryo is “just a handful of cells” (WorldNetDaily, Sept. 14, 2009). On this basis he claims that cloning embryos at an early stage is just fine. Sunstein was recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Darwinian evolution opened the Pandora’s Box of seeing the human embryo as something other than a developing human life. Darwin’s promoter in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, depicted the human embryo as exactly the same as a fish, a turtle, a chicken, and a rabbit. Haeckel’s famous embryo chart has been exposed as a lying fabrication, yet it appeared in countless scientific textbooks and popular publications over the past century and was still being used in the 1990s. Haeckel’s myth that the human embryo develops through stages from animal to man (which Haeckel called “recapitulation”) has encouraged the modern abortion industry. Dr. Henry Morris wrote, “We can justifiably charge this evolutionary nonsense of recapitulation with responsibility for the slaughter of helpless, pre-natal children--or at least for giving it a pseudo-scientific rationale” (The Long War against God, 1989, p. 139).

DA VINCI CODE AUTHOR LED ASTRAY BY LIBERAL PASTOR (Friday Church News Notes, September 25, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from a report published on September 16, 2009, by missionary Daryl Coats: “September 15, 2009, was the U.S. release date for the newest novel by Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code. As part of the world’s efforts to publicize this event as much as possible, the September 13 issue of Parade featured a brief interview with Brown. In response to the question ‘Are you religious?’ Brown responded as follows: ‘I was raised Episcopalian, and I was very religious as a kid. Then, in eighth or ninth grade, I studied astronomy, cosmology, and the origins of the universe. I remember saying to a minister, “I don’t get it. I read a book that said there was an explosion known as the Big Bang, but here it says God created heaven and Earth and the animals in seven days. Which is right?” Unfortunately, the response I got was, ‘Nice boys don’t ask that question.’ A light went off, and I said, ‘The Bible doesn’t make sense. Science makes more sense to me.’ And I just gravitated away from religion. Several things stand out about Brown's testimony. First, Brown obviously regrets his decision to abandon the Bible. Notice the use of the word ‘unfortunately’ as a preface to the answer he got from a ‘minster.’ Second, the Bible says, ‘The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple’ (Psalm 119:130). God obviously brought some light to the young Brown, but (according to his own testimony) when the young Brown rejected the only true source of light, ‘a light went off’-not ON. Third, [how illogical and foolish it is to] claim that the plain words of Genesis 1 do not ‘make sense,’ but that the concept of an explosion that created order instead of producing chaos and disorder--‘makes more sense to me’? Fourth, how much harm has been done to the cause of God because of one bad answer. (The Da Vinci Code has sold 80 million copies and been seen by millions in movie form.) [W]hen I was in school, false answers from teachers and denominational literature almost derailed me spiritually. ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’”

MUSLIMS MURDERING CHRISTIANS IN SOMALIA (Friday Church News Notes, September 25, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Muslim Militants Slay Long-Time Christian,” Compass Direct, Sept. 18, 2009: “The faith journey of a long-time underground Christian in Somalia ended in tragedy this week when Islamic militants controlling a security checkpoint killed him after finding Bibles in his possession. Militants from the Muslim extremist al Shabaab killed 69-year-old Omar Khalafe on Tuesday (Sept. 15) at a checkpoint they controlled 10 kilometers from Merca, a Christian source told Compass. ... Last month al Shabaab extremists seeking evidence that a Somali man had converted from Islam to Christianity shot him dead near the Somali border with Kenya. ... In Mahadday Weyne, 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, al Shabaab Islamists on July 20 shot to death another convert from Islam, Mohammed Sheikh Abdiraman, at 7 a.m., eyewitnesses told Compass. ... The militants reportedly beheaded seven Christians on July 10. Reuters reported that they were killed in Baidoa for being Christians and ‘spies.’ ... On Feb. 21 al shabaab militants beheaded two young boys in Somalia because their Christian father refused to divulge information about a church leader.”

NO-FAULT DIVORCE IS INSTITUTIONALIZED EVIL (Friday Church News Notes, September 25, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from S. Michael Craven, Christian Post, September 11, 2009: “No fault-divorce has wrought untold human suffering and injustice since its establishment in 1969. It is an evil that exists in active opposition to the principles of God’s kingdom. ... the availability of no-fault divorce has served to increase family dissolution at a rate greater than ever before in history; furthermore, it undermines the institution of marriage itself, perhaps more so than any other single factor in history. We would not be standing on the brink of same-sex marriage were it not for the corrosive effect upon marriage-as-an-institution that followed the divorce revolution. Constitutional and family law attorney J. Shelby Sharpe says, “No-fault is national catastrophe. Anything which overturns the order or systems of things whereby families are destroyed and the whole of society adversely affected is by definition a catastrophe. You may be surprised to learn that the initial efforts to advance no-fault divorce legislation were underwritten by Hugh Hefner through the Playboy Foundation, which financed an army of young lawyers working to advance these antifamily policies. Let’s see…America’s largest pornographer working to rewrite public policy related to the family? There’s something seriously wrong with this picture! Alfred Kinsey also played an instrumental role in reducing these legal protections by falsely reporting that adultery was commonplace in most marriages. This reduced the stigma associated with adultery and ultimately served as the basis for eliminating all laws against adultery. Hefner and Kinsey both saw marriage as the final barrier to sexual freedom and thus determined to remove its inhibiting influence upon unrestrained sexual activity. .... Under the system prior to no-fault divorce, the state was limited in its actions and intrusion into the private affairs of the family except in those cases in which one of the parties committed a legally recognized offense against the other. In the wake of no-fault divorce, the state has been given unprecedented access into and unconstitutional authority over what was previously sacrosanct: the family. ... No-fault divorce has created an easy divorce culture, which, according to Maggie Gallagher, an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values and a nationally syndicated columnist, “demotes marriage from a binding relation into something best described as cohabitation with insurance benefits.”

PERCENTAGE OF FEMALE PASTORS DOUBLED OVER PAST 10 YEARS (Friday Church News Notes, September 25, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - A study by Barna has found that the percentage of “Protestant” women serving as senior pastors in the U.S. has doubled over the past decade (Christian Post, Sept. 15, 2009). The number of female pastors currently stands at 10%. The Bible settled this matter 2,000 years ago, but in this day of apostasy the Word of God is largely ignored in favor of human philosophy and tradition. The apostle Paul wrote under divine inspiration, “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (1 Timothy 2:12).

INDEPENDENT BAPTIST ECUMENISM, PART I, ATTACKING SEPARATION (Friday Church News Notes, September 25, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - I am seeing a growing movement for an “independent Baptist ecumenism” or a “fundamentalist ecumenism.” According to this view, fundamentalists should separate from out-and-out heretics (those “out there”) but should promote only unity among ourselves. We should not be divided by issues such as dress, music, worship styles, Bible texts and versions, soul-winning methods, repentance, separation, etc. This is the philosophy that is promoted by Charles Keen in the book “Thinking Outside the Box” (First Bible International, 2003). Someone gave this to me on my last trip to the States, and I have decided to review it because Dr. Keen is an influential Independent Baptist leader and his philosophy is one that is spreading. In light of his work in pastoring First Baptist Church in Milford, Ohio, for 35 years and establishing the large Bearing Precious Seed ministry based there, I hesitate to do this, and I know from experience that considerable animosity will be aimed at me for such a critique and that I will be further labeled as “divisive”; but I believe the critique is necessary. Keen’s book has some good points. Independent Baptists do need to be challenged to throw away man-made tradition and think outside the box in that sense. The average Independent Baptist pastor is as tradition-bound as an Episcopalian. I wish I could continue in this vein and focus on the good things in this book, but there is a glaring problem. It contains clear New Evangelical thinking. In standard New Evangelical fashion, Keen takes many pot shots at separation. Though he says that he believes in separation he does not emphasize its importance nearly enough in this hour of raging apostasy and endless compromise. If anything, we need to preach more fervently on separation, not encourage men by any means to discount it. Consider the following excerpts: “Ecclesiastical separation can make our support group so small we have no meaningful impact worldwide” (p. 32). “... our good stand on separation has caused us to subconsciously withdraw from world evangelism” (p. 80). “Over-emphasizing separation causes us to turn inward, when in fact we are told to ‘go’ outward into all the world” (p. 81). “The world is dying and going to hell. God is losing worshippers at the rate of three a second. Are our differences sufficient to warrant that?” (p. 82). COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: There is no need whatsoever to set separation over against world missions as if they were enemies. Both are necessary; both are commanded of God. I, for one, practice both. My wife and I have spent decades of our lives planting churches in the very heart of the so-called 10/40 Window. Dr. Keen talks about getting someone to do it. We have done it. We had the privilege of planting the first Baptist church in Nepal in the 1980s, and our present goal is to plant 100 new churches through personal evangelism and training preachers. Our married children are involved in this project. You don’t have to artificially divide truth into essential and non-essential and take pot shots at and muddy the waters of biblical separation and promote highly questionable evangelical missiology to obey Christ’s command for world evangelism. Biblical separation doesn’t hinder biblical missions; it protects it from the ravages of error.

BE HOLY (Friday Church News Notes, September 25, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear” (1 Peter 1:13-17).

CONCLUSION: 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 obviously does not imply an endorsement. We trust that our readers will not be discouraged. 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. The News Notes remind us that the hour is very late, and we need to be ready for the Lord’s coming. Are you sure that you are born again? Are you living for Christ? “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). This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list. To SUBSCRIBE, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/wayoflife/subscribe.html. TO UNSUBSCRIBE OR CHANGE ADDRESSES, go to the very bottom of any email received from us and click "Manage My Subscription." Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org.