The vast majority of professing Christians today, even most evangelicals, do not believe that the Flood was global. This is because of end-times apostasy and the fearful accommodation to modern evolutionary theories.

For the following reasons we are certain that the Flood was global.

1. The Bible’s description points to a global flood.

The Bible plainly states that the flood of Noah’s day was worldwide. The great detail in which the Flood is described witnesses against a poetic or allegorical interpretation.

“And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them” (Genesis 6:7).

“And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die” (Genesis 6:17).

“For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth” (Genesis 7:4 ).

“And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered” (Genesis 7:19-20).

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.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY FACING TWO WAYS ON ADAM (Friday Church News Notes, June 24, 2011, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Hindu gods can face in multiple directions at once; they can be male and female; good and bad. This reminds me of Christianity Today’s approach to doctrine. It is pure emerging church: syncretistic, uncertain, despising dogmatism. CT was founded by Billy Graham in 1956 as the flagship publication of New Evangelical thought, and its rapid apostasy is a loud warning to those fundamentalists who are enticed today by “conservative evangelicalism.” Christianity Today was very conservative in its early years. The thing that destroyed the magazine’s spiritual discernment was the renunciation of separatism and the subsequent evil associations. “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1. Cor. 15:33). Now CT thinks it is possible to believe in the Bible while disbelieving what the Bible teaches about Adam. The June 2011 report entitled “The Search for the Historical Adam” is a shameless apologetic for “theistic evolution,” which is a cheap sellout to Darwinism. In particular, CT enthuses over geneticist John Collins, “one of the most eminent scientists ever to identify as an evangelical Christianity,” who “staunchly defends Darwinian evolution even as he insists on God as the Creator.” Predictably, CT also cites that evangelical superhero C.S. Lewis as an authority for rejecting the biblical Adam. Lewis ridiculously believed that man arose from the “animal form” and at some point God smote the evolving animal with human consciousness. For the sake of dialogue, CT also briefly cites the “conservative” view that “If Adam doesn’t exist, Paul’s whole argument [in Romans 5] falls apart.” Indeed, this isn’t just a “conservative” view, it is the only view that is taught in Scripture: by Moses (Gen. 2:19-23; 3:8, 9, 17, 20, 21; 4:1, 25; 5:1-5; Deut. 32:8), by Chronicles (1 Chron. 1:1), by Job (31:33), by Luke (Lk. 3:38), by Paul (Rom. 5:14; 1 Cor. 15:22, 45; 1 Tim. 2:13, 14), and by Jude (Jude 14). If Adam was not a real man, the Bible’s Messianic genealogy is nonsense and the gospel is a fairy tale. “And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli ... which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God” (Luke 3:23, 38). If Adam was not a real man, then who or what died when Adam died (Genesis 5:5)?

The following is excerpted from the book CONTEMPLATIVE MYSTICISM: A POWERFUL ECUMENICAL BOND, which is available from Way of Life Literature.

JOHN MICHAEL TALBOT (b. 1954) is a very popular Contemporary Christian Music recording artist, with sales of millions of CDs. He is also influential in the contemplative prayer movement. He represents two of the most powerful glues binding together the ecumenical movement, contemporary music and contemplative mysticism.

Talbot was raised Methodist, but in his book Come to the Quiet he thanks his parents for “installing a great love for world religions with me in my formative years.” From about age 10 he was singing and playing professionally with his siblings in folk bands. At age 15 he dropped out of school and formed the folk rock band Mason Proffit with his older brother Terry. They opened for Janis Joplin, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and other well-known groups and sold hundreds of thousands of records. At age 17 he married, and soon thereafter he began an earnest investigation into religion.

In 1971 Talbot was in a motel room praying, “God, are you a he, a she, or an it?” when he “saw a Christ figure standing over” him (Come to the Quiet, p. 5).

“I saw an image that looked like Jesus--it was a typical Christ figure--an incredible sight. He didn’t say anything--he was just there. ... I had been reading about Jesus and feeling him in my heart, but at that moment I actually experienced his touch. I knew it was Jesus” (Troubadour for the Lord, p. 46).

He says, “From then on, I began calling myself a Christian again, though I didn’t understand Christian theology.”

GRAPHICAL PDF VERSION

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.

ECUMENICAL DANCE FAD (Friday Church News Notes, June 17, 2011, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Resurrection dancing is a new fad that is sweeping the world. It was spawned by UpToFaith, a ministry in Hungary that performed the first Resurrection Dance in Heroes Square in Budapest on Easter Sunday 2010. UpToFaith is described as “a group of artists whose goal it is to see and make seen the invisible in the visible, eternity in time, and the heart of man.” Everything is doctrinally vague, allowing for a wide ecumenism. The music has a “driving beat with techno and rap elements” and the lyrics are nearly meaningless. Consider the chorus to “Up to Faith Dance”: “When it’s up to faith, be the difference/ It’s not up to fate, go the distance/ Once upon a time, write the story/ People up to faith, hearts restoring/ What’s the word today, who will lead us/ Living Word today, only Jesus/ Coming back to home, tears to laughter/ Happy ending found here and after.” What’s that mean? It means whatever you want it to mean. The Roman Catholic, the Protestant, the Baptist, even the New Ager can find his own meaning here. UpToFaith distributes a training video to teach the dance choreography. The ecumenical dance has been repeated at many places this year, including Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church. Second Baptist Church in Houston performed the dance routine on Discovery Green in the city’s downtown. It is scheduled to be performed in November in Richmond, Virginia, by the Baptist General Association of Virginia. Paige Peak, assistant executive director for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, says, “Virginia Baptists will come together in unity and cooperation through a dance of celebration” (“In November, Baptists in Virginia Will Be Dancing,” Associated Baptist Press, May 31, 2011). The dances don’t proclaim a clear gospel message; they proclaim the message of end-times apostasy. It’s about my self-esteem and being free to follow my heart. It’s about building the one-world church. It’s about imitating the ways of the world in contrast to Romans 12:2. It’s 2 Timothy 4:3-4 set to rock music. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”

The path from Independent Baptist to the broader evangelical church is clearly marked, and it typically leads through the Southern Baptist Convention. There we encounter treacherous waters where ancient heresies and end-times fables abound.

I don’t know of any Independent Baptist preachers (yet) who believe in the non-judgmental Shack god/goddess or salvation apart from faith in Christ or Christian homosexuality or the downgrade of hell or the partial inspiration of Scripture or Robert Schuller’s self-esteemism or who love the Roman Catholic mass or promote contemplative mysticism or deny the substitutionary atonement of Christ or promote New Age practitioners.

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 PRO-HOMOSEXUAL GREEN BIBLE (Friday Church News Notes, June 10, 2011, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Message by Eugene Peterson is extremely popular and influential. Rick Warren quotes it frequently, five times in the first chapter of The Purpose-Driven Life alone. It has been recommended by Warren Wiersbe, J.I. Packer, Jerry Jenkins, Joyce Meyer, Stuart and Jill Briscoe, Vernon Grounds, Bill Hybels, Leighton Ford, Billy Graham, Joni Earckson Tada, Chuck Swindoll, Bill Gaither, John Maxwell, Gordon Fee, Gordon MacDonald, and Max Lucado, to name a few. Yet, it is the goofiest, most frightfully corrupt “version” I have ever seen. It has a New Agey flavor (probably because of Peterson’s deep interaction with Catholic contemplative mysticism), even using the occultic term “as above, so below.” It is weirdly oriented toward environmentalism. In Romans 15:13, The Message says, “May the God of green hope fill you up with joy,” and in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 it says that those who “use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don’t quality as citizens in God’s kingdom.” The Message is also pro-homosexual, playing right into the hands of those who teach that homosexuality is a natural condition that God can bless instead of a sin that needs to be repented of. Every passage that condemns homosexuality is tampered with in The Message. For example, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 in the KJV’s “effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind” becomes the vapid and almost meaningless “those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex.” In 1 Timothy 1:10, “them that defile themselves with mankind” is changed to “the irresponsible, who defy all authority, riding roughshod over God, life, sex, truth, whatever.” Romans 1:26-27 becomes “sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men--all lust and no love.” This fits into the humanistic thinking that as long as homosexuals “love” one another, everything is fine. One brother rightly observed that “The Message is simply a forerunner to what will be a ‘christless,’ sinless Bible.” Beware of The Message and of the deeply corrupt evangelical world that loves it!

_____________________________

CONTENTS
Introduction
Heresies and High Places in the SBC and Evangelicalism
The Path of Protection: Full-orbed Biblical Separation
Frightful Examples of Those Who Have Been Shipwrecked
Conclusion

The path from Independent Baptist to the broader evangelical church is clearly marked, and it typically leads through the Southern Baptist Convention. There we encounter treacherous waters where ancient heresies and end-times fables abound.

I don’t know of any Independent Baptist preachers (yet) who believe in the non-judgmental Shack god/goddess or salvation apart from faith in Christ or Christian homosexuality or the downgrade of hell or the partial inspiration of Scripture or Robert Schuller’s self-esteemism or who love the Roman Catholic mass or promote contemplative mysticism or deny the substitutionary atonement of Christ or promote New Age practitioners.

But many evangelicals and Southern Baptists are guilty of these things.

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

“Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matthew 24:44).

“For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10).

James and Peter and John also taught that the Lord is at hand (James 5:9; 1 Peter 4:7; Revelation 1:3).

In contrast, consider the following heretical statements against the imminent return of Christ:

Tony Campolo hates dispensationalism and rejects the doctrine of Christ’s imminent return. He calls it “a weird little form of fundamentalism.” Speaking at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s annual meeting in June 2003, Campolo said: “That whole sense of the rapture, which may occur at any moment, is used as a device to oppose engagement with the principalities, the powers, the political and economic structures of our age” (“Opposition to women preachers evidence of demonic influence,” Baptist Press, June 27, 2003).

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.

JOHN PIPER’S INTERVIEW WITH RICK WARREN (Friday Church News Notes, June 3, 2011, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - One of the clearest evidences that “conservative evangelicals” are anything but safe spiritual guides today is witnessed by John Piper’s close relationship with Rick Warren. Conservative evangelicals like Piper are enablers of heresy by their refusal to deal with error plainly enough and to cut off association with it decidedly, and they therefore allow and even facilitate its spread. Piper is held forth as a passionate Reformed Baptist who is zealous for doctrinal truth, but his staunch theology has given him very little spiritual discernment. In April of this year he conducted a Desiring God conference at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, which was a massive personal recommendation for Warren’s ministry in the eyes of all beholders, and recently he had an interview with Warren on doctrinal issues. Afterward he gave Warren a clean bill of health and recommended his ministry, saying: “I believe Rick’s is a faithful heart. Listen to the clarity of his doctrinal commitments and hear the heartbeat of his love for Christ and those perishing without him” (DesiringGod.org, May 27, 2011). This is an amazing statement. Rick Warren is a clever man. He knows how to give the right answers in any context. He can be a Baptist for the Baptists, a Calvinist for the Calvinists, a Catholic for the Catholics. It was no accident that when he spoke to the Jewish Sinai Temple in Los Angeles he didn’t even mention the name of Jesus (“Jesus Man Has a Plan,” The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, June 23, 2006). Rick Warren is an end-times chameleon, and for John Piper to miss this is the plainest evidence, as far as I am concerned, of his own spiritual blindness and compromise. Or it is a lack of proper research. Piper based the interview on just one of Warren’s books, The Purpose Driven Life, but a man needs to be examined in the light of his entire teaching and ministry rather than one book. Piper’s questions were softballs. The interview reminded me of a CNN interview of Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. Piper spent a lot of time bragging on Warren, even praising incredibly unscriptural P.E.A.C.E. plan. Piper took a cheap pot shot at Warren’s detractors, pretending that they have slandered him by taking things out of context. And Piper didn’t challenge Warren’s answers. For example, he let him get away with saying that the gospel presentation in The Purpose Driven Church is shallow only because he did not have unbelievers in mind when he first wrote it as a seminar for his church. What nonsense! This is as silly as Aaron’s statement that he threw some stuff into a fire and out came a golden calf! Rick Warren knew exactly what he was doing when he published The Purpose Driven Life as a book for mass distribution, and he stated in it exactly what he wanted to state. The fact is that the cheap gospel found in this book is the same gospel that is published in Saddleback Church’s incredibly shallow statement of faith and in the documents used to receive new members. It is a super simple “believe and receive” that does not deal with sin or with the atonement in any significant way. It is a “gospel” that would not offend the Pope or a Mormon. Further, Piper let Warren give “explanations” that plainly contradict what he has stated elsewhere on numerous occasions. Piper should have said, “Rick, why are you a man of such contradiction? Isn’t it true that you speak with lack of clarity and in contradictions because you are a chameleon?” This strange interview reminds me of when Christianity Today examined Robert Schuller in 1984 and determined that he “believes all of the fundamental doctrines of traditional fundamentalism.”