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.

CANADA PASTOR CLEARED OF “HATE CRIME” AFTER SEVEN YEARS OF HARASSMENT (Friday Church News Notes, December 25, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - After seven years of harassment by the Human Rights Commission of Alberta, youth pastor Stephen Boissoin has been cleared of hate crimes against homosexuals by a civil judge (“Canadian Pastor Cleared,” Christian.org.uk, Dec. 8, 2009). As we first reported in Friday Church News Notes in September 2005, Boissoin was called before the Human Rights Commission for writing about the immorality and dangers of homosexuality. This appeared in a letter to the editor that was published in the Red Deer Advocate on June 17, 2002. Boissoin rightly lamented that “children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights.” A civil rights complaint was filed by homosexual activist Darren Lund, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary. Though threatened with a large fine, Boissoin said that he would not pay it nor would he apologize for what he wrote, even if he had to go to prison. He has stood by his convictions through the ordeal. In 2008, the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal found Boissoin guilty of hate crimes. It banned him from expressing his views on homosexuality “in newspapers, by e-mail, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet,” ordered him to pay $7,000 for “damages for pain and suffering,” and demanded that he apologize to Lund. We are pleased that Justice Earl Wilson has overturned this totalitarian-style ruling, having determined that Boissoin’s letter does not constitute a hate crime. He also said that Lori Andreachuk, the civil rights lawyer that issued the ruling under the auspices of the Human Rights Tribunal, made many errors in her decision and had no power to impose a speech ban on Mr. Boissoin.

Republished December 23, 2009 (first published July 3, 2000) (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 July 2000 issue of Charisma, the very influential Charismatic publication, has an article exhorting the readers to “Get in the Groove.” The author, J. Lee Grady, mocks traditional Christian music as “dirge-like” and “lily-white” and something only for “grandmothers.” He goes on to make the pretentious claim that worship music in Heaven will feature “a dozen Hammond-B3 organs and a procession of hip-hop [rap] dancers.” Not content with this brazen claim, Grady tells us that Jesus Christ “loves all music--even the funkiest” and that Jesus Christ enjoys dancing with the angels and “grooving to the sound of Christian R&B [rhythm and blues] pumped out of a boom box.”

How does Grady know this? The simple and frightful fact is that he knows no such thing. He is preaching a false christ, and the Contemporary Christian Music movement in general is preaching much the same thing. They tell us that Jesus Christ is not separated from the world, that He loves every sort of music in this wicked world, that He boogies to rock and roll, that He is pleased when His people hip hop around on a stage after the fashion of modern rappers.

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!

December 17, 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) -

“Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest thou be a cursed thing like it: but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing” (Deuteronomy 7:26).

One of the wisest things parents can do today is throw out the television altogether, except for watching educational programs and perhaps some carefully selected movies, and the selection of the latter will be slim indeed.

In looking back on my childhood growing up in a Baptist church, attending services at least three times a week, the two major influences that stole my heart for the world were public school friendships and television programs. We got a television when I was about eight years old (1957), and though the programs were nothing like they are today, they certainly did not encourage me spiritually. We got our television about a year after Elvis appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. I remember that by the time I reached junior high school, I did everything I could to stay home on Sunday nights, because that was when the most exciting programs of the week were on, such as the Disney Hour and The Ed Sullivan Show and the Dinah Shore program (“See the USA in your Chevrolet”). I don’t remember if I was home that Sunday night in 1964 when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, but I could have been. I was in high school and about that time my parents were having a lot of problems and had pretty much given up on trying to keep me in church. I had already started drinking and carousing around with my buddies every weekend. There is no doubt that television and movies fed my carnal imagination in a way that nothing else could have and, together with rock & roll, inflamed me with a passion for the things of the world.

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.

BEWARE OF SCIENCE FICTION (Friday Church News Notes, December 11, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Science fiction takes the reader into a strange world without God. Oh, there might be “a god,” a “force,” but it is definitely not the God of the Bible, and the prominent names in this field are atheists. Take CARL SAGAN, for example. His best-selling sci-fi novel Contact was made into a movie. Sagan was one of the high priests of atheistic evolution. In his novel he has the main character debating two preachers and saying, “There is no compelling evidence that God exists.” In 1997 Sagan said, “I share the view of a hero of mine, Albert Einstein: ‘I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I--nor would I want to--conceive of an individual that survives his physical death. Let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts’” (Parade, March 10, 1997). Consider another prominent name in Sci-Fi, ISAAC ASIMOV. In a 1982 interview he said, “Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time” (Paul Kurtz, “An Interview with Isaac Asimov on Science and the Bible,” Free Inquiry, Spring 1982, p. 9). Consider ROBERT HEINLEIN, called “the dean of science fiction writers.” He rejected the Bible and promoted “free sex.” His book “Stranger in a Strange Land” is considered “the unofficial bible of the hippie movement.” Heinlein was a nudist and practiced “polyandry.” He promoted agnosticism in his sci-fi books. Consider ARTHUR CLARKE, author of many sci-fi works, including 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke, who was probably a homosexual, promoted evolutionary pantheism. He told a Sri Lankan newspaper, “I don’t believe in God or an afterlife” (“Life Beyond 2001: Exclusive Interview with Arthur C. Clarke,” The Island, Dec. 20, 2000). In the instructions he left for his funeral in March 2008 he said, “Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral.” Consider KURT VONNEGUT. He was an atheist, and as an honorary president of the American Humanist Association he subscribed to its code which “does not accept supernatural views of reality.” Consider GENE RODDENBERRY, creator of Star Trek. He was an agnostic and humanist who envisioned a world in which “everyone is an atheist and better for it” (Brannon Braga, “Every Religion Has a Mythology,” International Atheist Conference, June 24, 2006). Science fiction is intimately associated with Darwinian evolution. Sagan and Asimov, for example, were prominent evolutionary scientists. Sci-fi arose in the late 19th and early 20th century as a product of an evolutionary worldview that denies the Almighty Creator. In fact, evolution IS the pre-eminent science fiction. Beware!

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.

THE CLIMATE CHANGE MAFIA EXPOSED (Friday Church News Notes, December 4, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Climate Change: The Worst Scientific Scandal of Our Generation,” by Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, Nov. 28, 2009: “A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term ‘Climategate’ to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. ... The reason why even the Guardian’s George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. ... his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely--not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it. Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's ‘hockey stick’ graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history. ... The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC’s scientific elite ... There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious ... is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws. ... The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction--to lower past temperatures and to ‘adjust’ recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. ... The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods--not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics’ work.”

“We were introduced to homeopathy recently by some folks in our church. We go to an independent fundamental Baptist church and some of the ladies in the church introduced my wife to this approach to medicine. It sounded too good to be true. My wife and I went to a meeting recently when the person presented homeopathy. She didn’t go into the occult side of things but did mention a couple times about an ‘energy.’ We were then approached by a brother in our church who said they heard that the idea of homeopathy was spreading quickly through the church ladies and warned me against this approach to medicine. He gave me an article to read from Logos which blasted homeopathy as occultic. Other articles, written by evangelicals, said it was a good approach to medicine and wasn’t occultic. So we are a little confused.”

Homeopathy is definitely associated with occultic principles. (We would note that the terms “homeopathy” and “naturopathy” are sometimes used interchangeably, but we are using them according to their official meanings.)

The man who wrote to us said, “She didn’t go into the occult side of things but did mention a couple of times about an “energy.” That is the occult side of things! Traditional medicine does not have a mystical energy!

Illustration above:

German physician Samuel Hahnemann was the founder of homeopathy. A vitalist, Dr Hahnemann believed that disease and disorder were triggered when the "vital force dominates the human body in an unopposed and dynamic way". Homeopathic healing methods are inspired by the so-called law of similars: Similia similibus curantur ["like cures like"]. Homeopaths claim that the cause of a disease-like sign or symptom in a healthy body is itself capable of curing the sign or symptom. This notion has ancient historical antecedents but is medically unsupported. Prudently, Hahnemann demanded payment of his fees in advance. from www.general-anaesthesia.com