December 18, 2009, Volume 10, Issue 51
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.
ORAL ROBERTS DIES, PROVING THAT HIS TEACHING WAS FALSE (Friday Church News Notes, December 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Famous Pentecostal “healing evangelist” Oral Roberts died of pneumonia on December 15 at age 91. This act proved that his teaching was false, as he often said that it is God’s will to heal every sickness. For example, the September 1976 issue of Abundant Life magazine contained an article entitled, “Why I Know that God Wants to Heal You.” Roberts wrote, “Sickness is part of the curse and Jesus came to destroy the curse. He suffered in our stead because he did not want us to suffer disease. He took our specific diseases and infirmities upon his own sinless, perfect body in complete payment for the penalty of sin,” and, “Sickness is not part of God’s plan and not devised by God’s will.” Roberts even suggested that preachers who pray for God to heal, “If it be thy will,” should be sued for “theological malpractice.” When he breathed his last, Roberts demonstrated with great finality that he was a false teacher. No one dies of healthiness!
GLOBAL WARMING GESTAPO: KILL A BABY AND SAVE THE EARTH (Friday Church News Notes, December 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - At the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen this week, the vice minister of China’s Family Planning Commission said her communist state’s “one-child” policy is helping save the world from “global warming” and should be a model for other nations to follow. Proclaiming the policy “a great success,” Zhao Baige said it has prevented 400 million births and thus saves “1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide “pollution” per year (“Chinese Minister Links ‘One-Child Policy’ to Emissions Reduction,” CNSNews, Dec. 11, 2009). She knows, of course, that the “one-child” policy has resulted in forced abortions and infanticide, but that does not faze a devoted Darwinist earth worshipper. In 2007, the Sierra Club called for stronger support for “family planning” in order to save the earth. This summer, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agreed that population control should be linked with environmental concerns. This week, Canada’s Financial Post called for a global law patterned after “China’s one-child policy” as “the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate,” calling China “the world’s leader in terms of fashioning policy to combat environmental degradation.” Sure, China has such a glorious environmental policy that you need a gas mask in Beijing to breathe the filthy air.
NEW STUDY CONCLUDES THAT NATURAL SELECTION “MAY NOT BE NOT THE CAUSE OF SPECIATION” (Friday Church News Notes, December 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - A new computerized study of thousands of plants and animals “suggest new species may arise from rare events instead of through an accumulation of small changes made in response to changes in the environment” (“Evolution may take giant leaps,” Physorg.com, Dec. 11, 2009). The study was conducted by Mark Pagel and other scientists at the University of Reading. Though it was based on Darwinist assumptions, it didn’t support Darwin’s processes. Charles Darwin claimed that species come into being through a gradual process of natural selection or “survival of the fittest,” but neither he nor any of his followers have ever given evidence of this. Darwin’s 1859 book was titled “On the Origin of the Species,” but he gave no evidence for such a thing. The only evidence he gave was for adaptation and minor changes within “kinds.” Since then, Darwinists have been probing, digging, dissecting, gazing, computerizing, and guessing, in the attempt to provide proof for Darwin’s “theory,” but it has been in vain. To this day there is not one speck of indisputable proof. Pagel said that “the model that provided the best fit for the data is surprisingly incompatible with the idea that speciation is a result of many small small events.” That is only surprising to a Darwinist.
THE UNITED NATIONS’ EARTH WORSHIPING SERVICE (Friday Church News Notes, December 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The United Nations has an earth-worshiping program entitled “The United Nations Environmental Sabbath Service.” First published in 1990, it is a call to prayer to an unknown entity for the salvation of the earth. It describes this entity only as “the energy that moves all things.” It is a call for all people “to join with the earth and with each other” for “the healing of the earth and the renewal of all life.” It urges the earth’s inhabitants to chant, “We live in all things; all things live in us. We live by the sun; we move with the stars.” This is the pagan pantheism that lies at the heart of the United Nations New Age objectives.
PARLIAMENT OF WORLD RELIGIONS MEETS IN MELBOURNE (Friday Church News Notes, December 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - More than 6,000 attended the fifth Parliament of World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia, December 3-9, to proclaim interfaith unity, world peace, and the sacredness and fragility of the earth. More than 220 “faith traditions” were present to celebrate the theme of “Making a World of Difference: Hearing Each Other, Healing Each Other.” There were Hindus, Buddhists, Shintos, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Wiccans, Scientologists, Sikhs, Australian Aborigines, North American nature worshipers, Jains, Atheists, Baha’is, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, even a Baptist named Jimmy Carter. The keynote address was delivered by Hindu “holy man” Ravi Shankar, who said that God “is in the heart of each and every one of us” and that the interfaith movement is “a necessity for the very survival of our planet.” A British child rights activist called for a ban on child spanking, claiming that it infringes children’s rights and dignity. A former British high court judge explained to the Parliament how to read the Bible in a way that justifies homosexuality. The first Parliament of World Religions in 1893 in Chicago was the first formal gathering of Christianity and Eastern religions. Hindu swami Vivekananda was given a three-minute standing ovation when he got up to speak and addressed his audience as “brothers and sisters.” He said that “the different paths which men take ... crooked or straight, all lead” to God. On the other hand, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
THE METROPOLITAN COMMUNITY CHURCH’S DELUSION (Friday Church News Notes, December 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches consists of 300 congregations in 22 countries and boasts a membership of 43,000. It was founded by a homosexual man named Troy Perry and about 80% of the membership is composed of “GLBT,” meaning gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender. They call their religion “Queer Spirituality” and claim that God made homosexuals as they are. They say, “It is time we listen to the experiences of God’s gay and lesbian children who know with all their hearts that God has created them just as they are” (Mona West, “The Bible and Homosexuality”). The history of the Metropolitan Community Church is a frightful study in spiritual delusion. In his autobiography, “The Lord Is My Shepherd and He Knows I Am Gay,” Troy Perry says that he tried to commit suicide in 1968 when his male “lover” left him. After that he was befriended by a black female preacher named Vera who told him that God had His hand on Him. She said, “You’re a minister; you always have been, and it won’t be long before you will be pastoring a church.” He was convinced that this message was from God because Vera told him things about his life that no one knew. He says, “She started to tell me many things about myself--she told me more than anyone could possibly have known about me. It really rocked me, and I knew that his was no ordinary woman. She had powers of insight that must have come from God.” Instead of repenting of his sin and putting his faith in Christ’s atonement, Perry said that he began to “feel God’s presence.” He decided that “God was the force of good, of energy, of creative positive happenings.” When Perry asked this God if he wanted him to start a church, he “heard a still small voice within say, ‘Now!’” In October 1968, he held the first “gay service” in his living room with 12 people in attendance. Perry’s first sermon was entitled “Be True to You,” from a line in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, “This above all: To thine own self be true.” Had Perry believed the Bible, he would have known that the devil knows secrets of people’s lives and the fact that Vera knew such things was no proof that she was of God. Further, any “still small voice” must be tested with Scripture, and again, it could not have been of God since it advised Perry to do something forbidden by God. The Bible says that all men are sinners, that God loves them and Jesus died them, but God also calls all men to repent and to turn to His holy paths. Any sinner should be welcome to attend church to hear God’s Word, but only those who repent are allowed to join. Some of the members of the church at Corinth were former homosexuals, but they had been converted and changed (1 Corinthians 1:9-11).
ECUMENISTS AND EMERGING CHURCHERS WARNING ABOUT “DANGEROUS” PRE-TRIBULATIONISTS (Friday Church News Notes, December 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Evangelicals and Catholics Together and the Rejection of End-Time Christians” by Roger Oakland, Light House Trails, Dec. 7, 2009: “If you haven’t already noticed, anti-Christian sentiment is growing toward those who believe in a biblical last days/Book of Revelation scenario prior to Christ’s return. A 2005 article titled ‘Lutheran leader calls for an ecumenical council to address growing biblical fundamentalism’ should help convince you. The article shows not only this growing resentment towards Bible-believing Christians but also the interspiritual path this change in attitude is taking: ‘The leader of the nation’s largest Lutheran has called for a global Christian council to address an “identity crisis” on how churches interpret and understand the Bible. Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America … called for Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran churches to come together to combat a fundamentalist-millenialist-apocalypticist reading of Scripture’ [Religious News Service, Aug. 11, 2005]. Hanson’s request for a group to monitor and expose anti-ecumenists who take the Bible literally carries some weight! His message contains other statements showing his concern about Bible literalists--particularly those who take Bible prophecy seriously and see Israel and the Middle East crisis as an end-times sign post. ... Bishop Hanson believes that a global ecumenical group made up of Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans is the answer to the crisis he sees. Hanson calls this effort a ‘ministry of reconciliation,’ that will ‘result of Christ breaking down the dividing walls,’ and ‘reconcil[ing] the whole creation to God’s self’ [‘The Church: Called to a Ministry of Reconciliation,’ Lutheran World, Sept. 2005]. Hanson says that those who believe in a biblical end times and a literal Bible interpretation are counterproductive to and holding back the cause of Christ, which he suggests is to unite all of creation and produce a planetary utopia. ... Reverend Munib Younan, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jerusalem, believes that those who adhere to an apocalyptic end-time scenario (with a focus on Israel) are spreading ‘heresy.’ ... He has requested that Lutherans ‘alert all Christians everywhere to its dangers and false teachings’ [‘Christian Zionism Is Heresy,’ The Lutheran, March 2003]. ... Tony Campolo says Christians that focus on end-time scenarios have been the cause of ‘extremely detrimental’ consequences. ... Brian McLaren also says that such Christians are really going to hurt our world. He writes, ‘An eschatology of abandonment, which is how I would characterize certain streams of the left-behind approach, has disastrous social consequences. … Any project geared toward improving the world long term is seen as unfaithful, since we’re supposed to assume that the world is getting worse and worse’ [Interview by Planet Preterist with Brian McLaren, Jan. 30, 2006] ... In essence, McLaren is saying if you believe the Book of Revelation and Matthew 24 are yet to take place, you are a dangerous psychological misfit and are assumed to have no compassion for the suffering, no concerns for the environment or the world in which we live, and have the potential to blow up the world with ‘weapons of mass destruction.’”
HOW CAN CHURCH MEMBERS KEEP A RIGHT RELATIONSHIP WITH THEIR PASTORS? (Friday Church News Notes, December 18, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Know them (1 Th. 5:12). The church member should go to the effort to know and understand his leaders. Honor them (1 Th. 5:13). Love them (1 Th. 5:13). Obey them (Heb. 13:17). Support them (1 Tim. 5:17-18). Bring an accusation against them only with witnesses (1 Tim. 5:19). Pray for them (Eph. 6:18-19).
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.