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.

LIFEWAY WANTS IT BOTH WAYS WITH “THE SHACK” (Friday Church News Notes, June 26, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Lifeway Christian Stores, which are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, are selling “The Shack,” a novel that depicts God as a woman who doesn’t judge people. The Lifeway bookstore in Huntsville, Alabama, has a notice that says, “This book may contain thoughts, ideas, or concepts that could be considered inconsistent with historical evangelical theology. Therefore, we encourage you to read it with extra discernment.” By means of this disclaimer, Lifeway intends to make money from this popular book while avoiding responsibility for its heresies, but it won’t work. The Bible warns that if we do not disassociate strictly from those who preach false christs, we become partakers of their evil deeds (2 John 7-11). Lifeway is not only associating with William Young and his heresies by selling the book, but they are actually putting funds into his coffers to enable him to promote his wretched heresies. The Lifeway warning says the book “MAY contain” thoughts contrary to sound theology and urges readers to use discernment, but they don’t identify any particular heresies and a large percentage of their customers doubtless lack the Bible knowledge and spiritual discernment required to discern truth from error. This is like serving up a dish contaminated with poison to children and warning them to eat with caution! The Lifeway bookstores are filled to the brim with psychology, self-help, self-esteem, romance novels, ecumenical and charismatic literature, undependable Bible versions, and all sorts of “Christian” rock music. On a visit to a Lifeway store in Huntsville last year I found that they had many titles by emerging church authors, including Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis), Brennan Manning (The Ragamuffin Gospel), Erwin McManus (The Barbarian Way), Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz), and Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution). Lifeway will stand accountable before God for polluting the minds and hearts of their customers with unscriptural material and for refusing to carry sound material from fundamentalist Bible-based publishers that they could and should be stocking but which they refuse to stock because it is “controversial.” (For more information see the reports “What Is the Emerging Church” and “The Shack’s Cool God” at the Way of Life web site.)

June 25, 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) -

HILDEGARD OF BINGEN (1098-1179) was a German nun in the Benedictine order. She was the head of two abbeys and was very influential through her writings. The date of her canonization as a saint is not known, but Pope John XXII mentioned her feast day in 1324 and she was included in Baronius’ 16th-century Roman Martyrology.

Since 1979 her works have enjoyed a revival through the contemplative movement. She is promoted by Richard Foster, who includes an entire chapter by her in his book Spiritual Classics. She is also promoted by Matthew Fox, the New Age priest who was ordained as an Episcopalian after being forced out of the Catholic priesthood.

She was put in a Benedictine monastery at age eight to be educated by Jutta von Spanheim, the abbess of the monastery who was an anchoress and practiced silent contemplation. As part of her asceticism an anchoress was devoted to live in a little cell next to a church for her entire life. There was only one door and a little window through which her food and other necessities were passed. The door was commonly locked from the outside, with only one or two people having a key and visitation privileges. They were even called prisons.

“Anchors of both sexes, though from most accounts they seem to be largely women, led an ascetic life, shut off from the world inside a small room, usually built adjacent to a church so that they could follow the services, with only a small window acting as their link to the rest of humanity. Food would be passed through this window and refuse taken out. Most of the time would be spent in prayer, contemplation, or solitary handworking activities, like stitching and embroidering. Because they would become essentially dead to the world, anchors would receive their last rights from the bishop before their confinement in the anchorage. This macabre ceremony was a complete burial ceremony with the anchor laid out on a bier” (“The Life and Works of Hildegard,” http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/hildegarde.html).

June 19, 2009, Volume 10, Issue 25

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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.

ROBERT SCHULLER APPOINTS DAUGHTER TO LEAD THE CRYSTAL CATHEDRAL (Friday Church News Notes, June 19, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Robert Schuller has announced that his daughter is the new leader of Crystal Cathedral Ministries. Sheila Schuller Coleman steps into the shoes that were previously worn by Schuller’s son, Robert Anthony, who resigned last year under mysterious circumstances. When the son’s removal as the host of the Hour of Power television program was announced last October, the elder Schuller simply said that they had “different ideas as to the direction and the vision for this ministry.” Those differences were never spelled out. The son has subsequently partnered with his son-in-law Chris Wyatt, founder of GodTube, to acquire AmericanLife TV, which they plan to use to broadcast “family-friendly” programs (“Schuller’s Daughter to Lead Crystal Cathedral,” Orange County Register, June 10, 2009). On June 7, the elder Schuller told his congregation that from now on Scheila is “the leader of leaders.” Robert Schuller has had a vast influence on modern Christianity. He has been one of the most popular religion television personalities in America for decades. His books sell by the millions. Schuller reinterprets the Bible to conform to his heretical self-esteem philosophy. To Schuller, sin is the lack of self-esteem. His christ is a psycho-savior who is “self-esteem incarnate.” His gospel is to replace negative self-concepts with positive ones. Schuller believes that all men are the children of God. Robert Schuller wants to create a new kind of Christianity: one that accepts the Fatherhood of God, that is positive and non-judgmental, that worships a self-esteem Christ, that denies the necessity of Christ’s blood atonement. (For documentation of Schuller’s heresies see “Robert Schuller and Evangelicals” at the Way of Life web site.)

June 18, 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) -
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CATHERINE OF SIENA (1347-80) was born Catherine Benincasa, in Siena, Italy. She was declared a saint in 1461 by Pope Pius II and a Doctor of the Church in 1970 by Pope Paul VI. Pope John Paul II declared her one of the patron saints of Europe.

Her body is reserved in the Saint Mary Minerva Church in Rome, while her head is enshrined in the basilica of St. Dominic in Bologna, Italy.

She took a vow of virginity to Christ at age seven and lived in near solitude, refusing her mother’s attempts to encourage her to live a normal childhood. When her mother tried to get her to dress in an attractive manner, she shaved off her hair. When her mother took her to a spa, she scalded her skin by exposing herself to the hottest geothermal vents. Biographer Kathryn Harrison says, “She allowed herself not one mortal pleasure.”

At age 16 she took the black habit of the Dominican Third Order. She claimed to have received her habit personally from Dominic, though he had been dead for a century.

She spent three years in solitary prayer in a little room, nine by three feet, speaking only to her Catholic confessor. She lived long periods of time with no food or water except the wine and wafers of the Mass. She scourged herself three times a day with an iron chain. She allowed herself only one-half hour of sleep every other day on a hard board. She wore a hairshirt and an iron-spiked girdle. “... her self-punishment left her body covered with gaping wounds, which she blithely referred to as her ‘flowers’” (The Way of the Mystics, p. 81).

THE EMERGING CHURCH’S FEMALE GOD (Friday Church News Notes, June 12, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Phyllis Tickle, an Episcopalian lay “Eucharistic minister and lector” and a Senior Fellow at Cathedral College at the liberal Washington National Cathedral, is an influential voice in the emerging church and the contemplative prayer movement. Tickle promotes non-verbal contemplative praying. She says, “The whole business of entering prayer WITHOUT THE VEHICLE OF WORDS is very important, for it allows the spirit to flow freely with the spirit of God, and does not have to articulate what is happening until one comes out from prayer” (“Praying in Color: A Conversation with friends and authors Sybil MacBeth and Phyllis Tickle,” http://www.explorefaith.org/books/macbeth.html). Wordless meditation is not biblical prayer; it is a pagan practice that is a recipe for demonic deception. Those who practice it are invariably led into heresies. It should not be surprising, then, that Tickle believes in a female God and calls the Holy Spirit “he or she or it.” She teaches that by partaking of the Lord’s Supper the believer is feeding God and reinvigorating the Holy Spirit, whatever that means. Speaking at Rob Bell’s Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, she said: “God is both male and female. God is both father and mother. ... There is more than one thing under the name of God, and it is both male and female. ... As we are about to do that [take the Lord’s supper], let us remember what we are doing. We not only celebrate that death and that promise of return, but we are feeding by eating God--which is what we are doing here--by eating the body and blood of our God, we are feeding the God within us. For as we take those elements the Spirit also feeds within us and is reinvigorated as he or she or it is by our faith” (Tickle, “A Treasure We Don’t Understand,” May 3, 2009). Phyllis Tickle, Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, and that crowd are worshipping idols. The Shack, a popular book in emerging circles, also depicts God as a woman.

June 10, 2008 (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 from the new Advanced Bible Studies Series on the Epistle of James. $9.95


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“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted: But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways” (James 1:2-11).

James mentions five things that are necessary in order to have victory in trials.

1. Count it joy (Jam. 1:2).

Republished June 9, 2009 (first published November 13, 2006) (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 evolutionist would have me put aside my biblical presuppositions when I study the natural record and the textual critic would have me put them aside when I study the manuscript record, but I will not put biblical presuppositions aside for any reason. As David W. Norris wisely observes: “We have a clear choice between one of two diverging pathways, the road of faith or the road of human reason and unbelief. Do we begin with the Word of God or do we begin with the word of men? This is the question and it has in the first instance little to do with texts, but with the faithfulness of our God. ... For it to be of any use, textual study must be grounded upon what the Bible already says about itself. If we do not begin with the Word of God, we shall never end with it!” (Norris, The Big Picture).

EIGHT BIBLICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS FOR APPROACHING THE BIBLE VERSION ISSUE

1. I BELIEVE IN THE SUFFICIENCY OF SCRIPTURE (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

The Bible contains everything that we need for faith and practice. It is able to make the believer “perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” Obviously, then, nothing else is necessary. I do not have to rely on priests or scholars or tradition or extra biblical sources.

2. I BELIEVE IN THE SOUL LIBERTY OF THE BELIEVER, meaning that each believer can know the truth for himself and is responsible to test everything by God’s Word (Acts 17:11; 1 Cor. 2:15-16; 1 Thess. 5:21).

Thus, it is evident that the child of God can make his own decision in the important matter of the Bible text-version issue. I do not ask my readers to depend on me and to follow my teaching; I ask them simply to prove all things and hold fast that which is good and to receive my teaching with all readiness of mind and to search the Scriptures daily whether these things are so.

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.

HOW THE POP CULTURE HAS DUMBED DOWN SOCIETY (Friday Church News Notes, June 5, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The rock & roll pop culture has been dumbing down society since its inception in the 1950s. The pop culture image of cool is the individual who excels in foolishness, the Elvis Presleys, the James Deans, the John Lennons, the rock & roll playboys, the Hollywood starlets. Influential pop culture movies such as “Blackboard Jungle,” “Rebel without a Cause,” and “The Wild One” emphasized irresponsibility, insubordination, free sex, and scholastic laziness. “The Blackboard Jungle” used a Bill Haley soundtrack to encourage young people to forget their studies and “rock around the clock.” In “Rebel without a Cause” James Dean exuded the essence of pop cool: unisex sensuality, narcissism, and rebellion to authority. “The Wild One,” played by the very cool Marlon Brando, glorified self-centered living and neglect of education. Chuck Berry’s hit “School Days” encouraged young people to exchange their boring studies for the glories of rock & roll partying: “Hail, hail rock and roll/ Deliver me from the days of old/ Long live rock and roll/ The beat of the drums, loud and bold/ Rock, rock, rock and roll/ The feelin’ is there, body and soul.” By the 1960s, the modern teenage culture was well established, with its own me-first attitude, Dionysian philosophy, oft ridiculous fashions (anything to differentiate the teenager from his elders), and particularly its own music. The modern teenager has always been driven by pop music. Rock stars set the tone. A serious education is downplayed for the sake of having “fun, fun, fun.” I was dramatically influenced by the pop culture from the time I arrived in junior high school in 1962. Though I had some God-given intelligence and love for reading, I soon realized that being a diligent student was not cool. I became far too busy being a proper pop culture teenager to give serious attention to my studies and as a result I was a mediocre to poor student. Nothing has changed since then. The term “nerd” comes from the climate of teenage cool. It defines a young person who is serious about scholarship and probably doesn’t fit in too well with the foolish but oh-so-cool crowd. I was reminded of this by a recent Associated Press report entitled “I Love Nerds” about the 2009 National Spelling Bee contestants. It observed that the bright students “stand out as a bit dorkey back home.” Jose Cabal of Miami said, “It’s like back home I’m a nerd. Up there, everyone else is a nerd.” The serious spellers have memorized tens of thousands of words and have sharpened their intellect and perfected their use of the English language, but they aren’t cool. The entire concept of the “nerd” exposes the vanity and foolishness of the pop culture. It is the “nerd” that is using his or her life sensibly, whereas the cool crowd is dedicated to vanity. The pop culture teenage philosophy typically leaves young people ignorant and deeply scarred with sin. But the power of teenage cool is enormous and the average young person is not wise enough to withstand its appeal. Many reports have been written on the decline in education in America. In 1994 the editor of Harper magazine characterized the national test scores as “a coroner’s report ... [that] returned a finding of mortal ignorance.” But most studies on modern American education neglect one of the most powerful influences, which is the pop culture. When the Herman’s Hermits sang in the 1965, “Don’t know much about history/ Don’t know much biology/ Don’t know much about a science book,” they were expressing the philosophy of teenage cool.

June 3, 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) -

Home schooling is an important movement in North America, and we commend the Christian parents that take the God-given responsibility to train their children seriously. We are thankful for parents that refuse to support the godless, anti-christ, morally-filthy, Darwinistic, humanistic, socialistic, psychologized, paganized, homosexualized public school system. Well does the Word of God warn, “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33).

But we must be careful about the influence of unsound literature on young minds. Home schooling curriculums are one of the ways that Reformed Calvinist theology is spreading through independent Baptist circles. Consider some examples. The following three organizations hold to TULIP theology and reject the literal interpretation of prophecy and the pretribulational return of Jesus Christ. They hold to a replacement position which sees the church as the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel.