Friday Church News Notes
Volume 19, Issue 14 - April 6, 2018
The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, though this does not imply an endorsement.
West Coast Choir sings Because He Lives (Amen) on the beach. (Screen shot taken from West Coast Baptist Youtube video)
LANCASTER/WEST COAST PERFORM ROMAN CATHOLIC MATT MAHER WORSHIP SONG (Friday Church News Notes, April 6, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The West Coast Baptist College choir produced a worship video a few months ago featuring Roman Catholic Matt Maher’s “Because He Lives (Amen).” It is beautifully sung and professionally produced, and the words are OK. (The music is questionable, but the problem with the music is subtle and we won’t try to deal with it here.) The glaring issue is that the very choice of this song is evidence that Lancaster Baptist Church is addicted to contemporary worship music produced by the most ecumenical, one-world church people on earth. There is no possibility that at least some of the young people singing this song and the leaders leading it and the people producing it are not listening to full-blown contemporary music in their private lives. Of all the myriad of songs and hymns and spiritual songs that exist, why would a fundamental Baptist church that is allegedly anti-ecumenical choose such a song by such a man? Can some Lancaster supporter please answer that for me? Matt Maher is a Roman Catholic ecumenical bridge builder. He prays to Mary and worships the consecrated wafer of the Catholic mass as very Jesus. Maher has led worship in the presence of three popes: John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. Can a man who prays to Mary as the Queen of Heaven and worships a piece of bread and honors the pope as the Vicar of Christ be of the same Spirit as a fundamental Baptist? Can such a man’s “Jesus” be the Jesus of the Bible? Sure, he is using the Bible’s words, but he defines those words entirely differently than a Bible-believing Christian. That is ecumenical duplicity. Does a large Baptist Bible College not understand these simple and very fundamental things? Do they not know anything about ecumenism and Romanism? Do their preacher supporters not understand these things and not care about truth? Maher’s stated goal in ministry is to bring together all denominations and build the “one-world church,” and he has gotten his hooks into many Baptists. He has not hidden this. He says, “I’ve had co-writing sessions with Protestants where we had that common denominator, and I’ve seen in a very radical way the real possibility of unity” (“Common Bonds,” Christianity Today, Oct. 27, 2009). Those who join hands with Matt Maher, such as Chris Tomlin and the Gettys and the Gaithers, know this about Maher and obviously agree with his ecumenism (Amos 3:3). Paul Chappell and his staff think that they can mess around with this music and not have a terribly negative influence on the present and future generations of churches, but they are deeply deceived. And every pastor who is supporting them in the “adaptation” of contemporary worship is the blind following the blind. Every one. Every single one. (For more on this see “Matt Maher: Building the One-World Church.”)
THE FOX NEWS JESUS IS AMERICA’S JESUS (Friday Church News Notes, April 6, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Fox News talks about Jesus. Some Bible-believing Christians seem to think it is a great thing for America that a major secular news company talks about Jesus. Some of the Fox News “talking heads” are professing Christians, including some of the biggest names. They mention Jesus at Easter, even His resurrection, and they complain about the secularization of Christmas. Fox News talks about Jesus, but it is the 21st Century America Jesus. It is the Jesus of The Shack. It is a no repentance Jesus, who would never say, “Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5). It is a non-exclusive Jesus, who would never say (and certainly not ever really mean it literally), “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). It is a no hell-fire Jesus, who would never say, “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:41-42). It is a non-rejecting Jesus, who would never say, “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23). It is a non-judgmental Jesus, who would never say, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44). It is a non-rebuking Jesus, who would never say to false teachers, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Matthew 23:33). It is a non-distinguishing Jesus, who would never say, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). The 21st Century America Jesus, the Western pop culture Jesus, the Fox News Jesus, The Shack Jesus, is a myth. It is an idol of man’s creation, and those who believe in that myth are in love with something that is not real and cannot save. I’m so glad that I turned from false christs at age 23. I grew up with The Shack Jesus in the Southern Baptist Convention. He was the “pray this little sinner’s prayer and now you are saved even though nothing has changed and you can live the rest of your life as you pretty much please” Jesus. After I left church, I followed the false christ of Christian Science, the false christ of environmentalism (the tree hugging Jesus), then briefly the false christ of Hinduism. How I thank the Lord for His great, undeserved mercy upon me in giving me true repentance toward God and faith in the true and most blessed Christ of Scripture! If you want to know the true Jesus who lived on this earth 2,000 years ago and died and shed His blood to pay the full atonement for man’s wicked sins and rose from the dead the third day and ascended back to heaven and is coming again to put down the age-old rebellion against God and establish His righteous kingdom, read the Bible! He is revealed there. And don’t be so foolish as to pick and choose the “Jesus” you like. Don’t metaphorically cut the things you don’t like from the pages of the Bible, as Thomas Jefferson did literally. The Jesus Christ of Scripture cannot be received piecemeal like a buffet lunch. He’s all or nothing! And no truth lover would want anything but the whole and real Jesus!
POPE ALLEGEDLY SAYS THERE IS NO HELL (Friday Church News Notes, April 6, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Pope Francis,” CNSNews.com, Mar. 29, 2018: “In another interview with his longtime atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis claims that Hell does not exist and that condemned souls just ‘disappear.’ This is a denial of the 2,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of Hell and the eternal existence of the soul. The interview between Scalfari and the Pope was published March 28, 2018 in La Repubblica. The relevant section on Hell was translated by the highly respected web log, Rorate Caeli. The interview is headlined, ‘The Pope: It is an honor to be called revolutionary’ (‘Il Papa: ‘È un onore essere chiamato rivoluzionario). Scalfari says to the Pope, ‘Your Holiness, in our previous meeting you told me that our species will disappear in a certain moment and that God, still out of his creative force, will create new species. You have never spoken to me about the souls who died in sin and will go to hell to suffer it for eternity. You have however spoken to me of good souls, admitted to the contemplation of God. But what about bad souls? Where are they punished?’ Pope Francis says, ‘They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.’”
LONDON’S MURDER RATE EXCEEDS NEW YORK’S (Friday Church News Notes, April 6, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Knife Attacks Propel London to Outpace NYC’s Murder Rate,” DailyWire, Apr. 2, 2018: “London, lauded by the Left for its strict gun laws and embrace of multiculturalism, is not the haven it’s cracked up to be. In February, the U.K. capital outpaced New York City’s murder rate for the first time in modern history as London experienced a surge in knife attacks. Both cities have roughly the same population; in the month of February, 15 people were murdered in London, whereas NYC recorded 14 homicide deaths, reports The London Times. London is set to outpace NYC’s murder rate for March as well. ‘By late last night there had been 22 killings in the capital, according to the Metropolitan police, against 21 in the US city,’ notes the Times. Eight of those murdered in March happened in a span of just seven days. Since 2014, excluding victims of terrorism, the number of London murders has risen by a stunning 38%. London has also seen an ‘epidemic’ of acid attacks in recent years.”
THE AMAZING FIG TREE-WASP SYMBIOSIS (Friday Church News Notes, April 6, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The biblical fig is the Ficus carica, which is native to Western Asia but is grown commercially throughout the world. It is a deciduous tree that grows to a height of 23-33 feet (7-10 m). The fragrant leaves are 5-10 inches long and 4-7 inches wide and are deeply lobed with three or five lobes. It is a beautiful tree with smooth white bark and multiple trunks that form a great variety of habits or forms. As the tree ages, the thick trunks and the above-ground roots are intertwined to form beautiful shapes. It is pollinated by a fig wasp, which is the only creature capable of pollinating this tree. There are more than 700 species of figs and each has its own specialized wasp. The tree bears two types of fruit, one (the caprifig) is capable of being pollinated for reproduction of the tree; the other is female and is the edible fruit. The female wasp crawls inside the caprifig through a tiny hole (the ostiole), lays her eggs and dies. After the offspring hatch, the males mate with the females, then dig tunnels out of the fruit and die. The females, covered in fig pollen, crawl out of the tunnels and fly off to repeat the cycle. This is one of the myriad of symbiotic relationships in “nature.” The wasp provides the tree with pollination services, while the tree provides the wasp with a safe environment for reproduction. Evolutionists claim that the wasp-fig wasp symbiosis is an example of “co-evolution,” but if so it means that these two complex living things “evolved” at exactly the same time with full-blown capabilities. That sounds more like creation to me! The idea of “co-evolution” is an evolutionary “Just So” story that attempts to explain away the complexity of creation, but it is a fairy tale. Evolutionists have never proposed a creative mechanism that could produce complex living creatures. Natural selection is not creative but genetically selective, and mutations are overwhelmingly destructive and do not build up information to the creature’s genome in a creative way.
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).
THE FOX NEWS JESUS IS AMERICA’S JESUS (Friday Church News Notes, April 6, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Fox News talks about Jesus. Some Bible-believing Christians seem to think it is a great thing for America that a major secular news company talks about Jesus. Some of the Fox News “talking heads” are professing Christians, including some of the biggest names. They mention Jesus at Easter, even His resurrection, and they complain about the secularization of Christmas. Fox News talks about Jesus, but it is the 21st Century America Jesus. It is the Jesus of The Shack. It is a no repentance Jesus, who would never say, “Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5). It is a non-exclusive Jesus, who would never say (and certainly not ever really mean it literally), “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). It is a no hell-fire Jesus, who would never say, “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:41-42). It is a non-rejecting Jesus, who would never say, “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23). It is a non-judgmental Jesus, who would never say, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44). It is a non-rebuking Jesus, who would never say to false teachers, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Matthew 23:33). It is a non-distinguishing Jesus, who would never say, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). The 21st Century America Jesus, the Western pop culture Jesus, the Fox News Jesus, The Shack Jesus, is a myth. It is an idol of man’s creation, and those who believe in that myth are in love with something that is not real and cannot save. I’m so glad that I turned from false christs at age 23. I grew up with The Shack Jesus in the Southern Baptist Convention. He was the “pray this little sinner’s prayer and now you are saved even though nothing has changed and you can live the rest of your life as you pretty much please” Jesus. After I left church, I followed the false christ of Christian Science, the false christ of environmentalism (the tree hugging Jesus), then briefly the false christ of Hinduism. How I thank the Lord for His great, undeserved mercy upon me in giving me true repentance toward God and faith in the true and most blessed Christ of Scripture! If you want to know the true Jesus who lived on this earth 2,000 years ago and died and shed His blood to pay the full atonement for man’s wicked sins and rose from the dead the third day and ascended back to heaven and is coming again to put down the age-old rebellion against God and establish His righteous kingdom, read the Bible! He is revealed there. And don’t be so foolish as to pick and choose the “Jesus” you like. Don’t metaphorically cut the things you don’t like from the pages of the Bible, as Thomas Jefferson did literally. The Jesus Christ of Scripture cannot be received piecemeal like a buffet lunch. He’s all or nothing! And no truth lover would want anything but the whole and real Jesus!
POPE ALLEGEDLY SAYS THERE IS NO HELL (Friday Church News Notes, April 6, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Pope Francis,” CNSNews.com, Mar. 29, 2018: “In another interview with his longtime atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis claims that Hell does not exist and that condemned souls just ‘disappear.’ This is a denial of the 2,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of Hell and the eternal existence of the soul. The interview between Scalfari and the Pope was published March 28, 2018 in La Repubblica. The relevant section on Hell was translated by the highly respected web log, Rorate Caeli. The interview is headlined, ‘The Pope: It is an honor to be called revolutionary’ (‘Il Papa: ‘È un onore essere chiamato rivoluzionario). Scalfari says to the Pope, ‘Your Holiness, in our previous meeting you told me that our species will disappear in a certain moment and that God, still out of his creative force, will create new species. You have never spoken to me about the souls who died in sin and will go to hell to suffer it for eternity. You have however spoken to me of good souls, admitted to the contemplation of God. But what about bad souls? Where are they punished?’ Pope Francis says, ‘They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.’”
LONDON’S MURDER RATE EXCEEDS NEW YORK’S (Friday Church News Notes, April 6, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Knife Attacks Propel London to Outpace NYC’s Murder Rate,” DailyWire, Apr. 2, 2018: “London, lauded by the Left for its strict gun laws and embrace of multiculturalism, is not the haven it’s cracked up to be. In February, the U.K. capital outpaced New York City’s murder rate for the first time in modern history as London experienced a surge in knife attacks. Both cities have roughly the same population; in the month of February, 15 people were murdered in London, whereas NYC recorded 14 homicide deaths, reports The London Times. London is set to outpace NYC’s murder rate for March as well. ‘By late last night there had been 22 killings in the capital, according to the Metropolitan police, against 21 in the US city,’ notes the Times. Eight of those murdered in March happened in a span of just seven days. Since 2014, excluding victims of terrorism, the number of London murders has risen by a stunning 38%. London has also seen an ‘epidemic’ of acid attacks in recent years.”
THE AMAZING FIG TREE-WASP SYMBIOSIS (Friday Church News Notes, April 6, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The biblical fig is the Ficus carica, which is native to Western Asia but is grown commercially throughout the world. It is a deciduous tree that grows to a height of 23-33 feet (7-10 m). The fragrant leaves are 5-10 inches long and 4-7 inches wide and are deeply lobed with three or five lobes. It is a beautiful tree with smooth white bark and multiple trunks that form a great variety of habits or forms. As the tree ages, the thick trunks and the above-ground roots are intertwined to form beautiful shapes. It is pollinated by a fig wasp, which is the only creature capable of pollinating this tree. There are more than 700 species of figs and each has its own specialized wasp. The tree bears two types of fruit, one (the caprifig) is capable of being pollinated for reproduction of the tree; the other is female and is the edible fruit. The female wasp crawls inside the caprifig through a tiny hole (the ostiole), lays her eggs and dies. After the offspring hatch, the males mate with the females, then dig tunnels out of the fruit and die. The females, covered in fig pollen, crawl out of the tunnels and fly off to repeat the cycle. This is one of the myriad of symbiotic relationships in “nature.” The wasp provides the tree with pollination services, while the tree provides the wasp with a safe environment for reproduction. Evolutionists claim that the wasp-fig wasp symbiosis is an example of “co-evolution,” but if so it means that these two complex living things “evolved” at exactly the same time with full-blown capabilities. That sounds more like creation to me! The idea of “co-evolution” is an evolutionary “Just So” story that attempts to explain away the complexity of creation, but it is a fairy tale. Evolutionists have never proposed a creative mechanism that could produce complex living creatures. Natural selection is not creative but genetically selective, and mutations are overwhelmingly destructive and do not build up information to the creature’s genome in a creative way.
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).
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Distributed by Way of Life Literature., publisher of Bible Study Materials and reports for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. Established in 1974, Way of Life Literature is a fundamental Baptist preaching and publishing ministry based in Bethel Baptist Church, London, Ontario, of which Wilbert Unger is the founding Pastor. Brother Cloud lives in South Asia where he has been a church planting missionary since 1979. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY (REPORTS AND FRIDAY NEWS) IS NOT DEVOTIONAL. IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR.
David Cloud, Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org
The Way of Life Literature preaching and publishing ministry is based at Bethel Baptist Church, London, Ontario, of which Wilbert Unger is the founding Pastor. A mail stop is maintained in Port Huron, Michigan.
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