Friday Church News Notes
Volume 19, Issue 16 - April 20, 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.
TESTIMONIES OF FIRST BAPTIST HAMMOND SOUL WINNERS (Friday Church News Notes, April 20, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Hyles-Anderson Baptist College and First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, have had the greatest responsibility for spreading the weird heresy of Quick Prayerism throughout the world. This occurred under the leadership of Jack Hyles. The Sword of the Lord published Hyles’ books on Quick Prayerism soul winning beginning in 1962 (Let’s Go Soul Winning and Let’s Build an Evangelistic Church). Quick Prayerism is an evangelistic methodology that is quick to get people to pray a sinner’s prayer after a shallow gospel presentation that, typically, is devoid of any hint of the necessity of repentance. It is quick to pronounce those people saved and give them “assurance” and to try to baptize them even if they demonstrate zero biblical evidence of having been born again. Quick Prayerism incorporates psychological salesmanship manipulation and is characterized by soul winning reports that are grossly exaggerated, since the number of actual spiritual conversions are exceedingly minute compared to the overall statistics. In an online video of Hyles-Anderson preacher boys giving soul winning testimonies under the direction of Jack Schaap (when Hyles was still pastor), one young man stood up and told an amazing story. He and a fellow student decided to approach a Catholic school and witness to “kids on the playground.” A Jesuit priest stopped them, but after some time he and three other priests invited them to look over their facilities. As they did, one of the teachers, a nun, invited the Hyles-Anderson preacher boys into her class, and they “immediately started soul winning.” The young man said, “Before it was all said and done with, all of the kids in the class, 21 of them, were saved, and also the teacher.” Hearing this, the other students shouted and whistled, not asking how these Catholics understood the gospel in a matter of minutes and whether there was any biblical evidence that they had actually “gotten saved.” Quick Prayerism has been promoted in countless churches through the Phoster Club, a women’s soul winning program that began at First Baptist of Hammond. An online testimony of Phoster Club soul winners features an 81-year-old lady named Betsy, who, after only a few weeks, had won 55 people. In another testimony, a Native American lady said that she had won 180 souls, including 70 Navajo Indians. Cindy Hyles Schaap was the queen of soul winning, though. She is Hyles’ daughter and the former wife of Jack Schaap, who took the pastorate of First Baptist after Hyles died. (They were divorced after he was imprisoned for a sexual relationship with a teenage girl.) In the online videos, Cindy says that her parents allowed her to start participating in teenage soul winning visitation when she was 11, and between then and high school graduation she won 2,500 souls. Two thousand five hundred! Years later, at the time she gave that testimony as a married woman, she had won 5,000. For these video clips see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tifnWiEgWgE&feature=youtu.be
MARIJUANA SMOKING LINKED TO HIGHER STROKE, HEART RISKS (Friday Church News Notes, April 20, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Pot Smoking,” Newsmax.com, Mar. 16, 2018: “A major new study claims that smoking marijuana dramatically increases a person’s risk of suffering a heart attack and other cardiovascular events. The study authors, along with top cardiologists across the country, are calling for more research into the use of medicinal and recreational cannabis in light of the startling new evidence. Researchers found that over a 5-year period, regular users as young as in their early 30s were 4.6 times more likely to have a cardiac-related illness than those who did not smoke the drug. Scientists from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio presented their findings at the recent American College of Cardiology (ACC) conference held in Washington, D.C. ... While most medical concerns over the use of cannabis have been linked to mental disorders and depression, researchers also discovered a link between marijuana use and increased risk of stroke and heart failure. ‘Even when we corrected for known risk factors, we still found a higher rate of both stroke and heart failure in those patients using the drug,’ says Dr. Aditi Kalla, a cardiologist at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. ‘That leads us to believe that there is something else going on besides just obesity and or diet-related cardiovascular side effects.’ Researchers found that marijuana use was independently associated with a 26 percent increased risk of stroke and a 10 percent increase in heart failure. Kalla noted that medical or recreational marijuana use is legal in more than half of U.S. States so a better understanding of its ill effects is needed. ‘While the studies did not show a direct cause and effect between pot use and cardiovascular events, the statistics do present an association which means we need more studies,’ Dr. Kevin Campbell, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based cardiologist tells Newsmax Health. ‘We already know that smoking marijuana damages the lining of the lungs and can adversely affect the liver. We need to investigate the correlation between pot and heart disease especially now with the push to legalize the drug across the country.’”
THE BROCCOLI TREE (Friday Church News Notes, April 20, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In May 2013, Patrik Svedberg posted the photo of a lone tree on a Swedish lakeshore, a tree that looks a bit like broccoli. As months passed, he uploaded more photos of the tree, in different weather conditions, at different times of year, with different social events occurring in its vicinity. Eleven months after the first photo was posted, Svedberg gave it its own Instagram and began photographing it several times a week. His followers increased to thousands and in the summer of 2015 he held an exhibition of Broccoli Tree photos at the Broccoli Tree. A Broccoli Tree calendar and Broccoli Tree prints became popular. By 2016, the Broccoli Tree was so famous that it became a tourist attraction. Google Maps created a street view of the tree. By 2017, the Broccoli Tree Instagram had 27,000 followers, but on September 27 of that year, someone nearly severed one of the main trunks of the tree with a saw and it had to be cut down. There are many lessons to this story. The beautiful tree itself points to God’s creative power and love of beauty and care for man. We are reminded that men love the creation even though they reject the Creator. As the Bible puts it, they worship and serve “the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). The Broccoli Tree is also an illustration of the transformation of society in the Internet age and the power of social media in general and of Instagram in particular. The destruction of the tree reminds us that we live in a fallen world. The Broccoli Tree is a remnant of Eden, but man no longer lives in Eden because he rebelled against His compassionate Creator. This world is no longer Eden, and men are no longer innocent and sinless Adams. Finally, the Broccoli Tree reminds us of salvation. It was a tree upon which the Son of God suffered and bled and died to atone for man’s sin so that sinners might be reconciled with a holy God.
INSIGHTFUL 19TH-CENTURY WARNING OF APOSTASY (Friday Church News Notes, April 20, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - At the 1886 International Prophetic Conference in Chicago, Baptist Pastor A.J. Frost delivered the following insightful warning about apostasy. He wasn’t a prophet; he was a man who believed the Word of God literally. The leavening of which he warned is almost complete. “The final and well-nigh universal apostasy of Christendom is repeatedly foretold in the Scriptures. This dispensation like all that have preceded it will end in the most fearful apostasy this world has ever known to be immediately followed by the overwhelming judgments of God. ... In the Laodicean age of the church we find indifference and lukewarmness; a most nauseating condition! ... At this stage nearly all Christendom will be leavened with false doctrine; it is already rapidly working. The nominal Christian world will be one vast mass of baptized profession; a corrupt, mysterious mixture, a spiritual malformation, a masterpiece of Satan the corruption of the truth of God, and the destroyer of the souls of men, a trap, a snare, a stumbling block, the darkest moral blot in the universe of God! It is the corruption of the very best thing and therefore the worst kind of corruption. It is that thing which Satan has made of professing Christianity. It is worse by far than Judaism, worse by far than all the darkest forms of paganism, because it has had higher light and richer privileges, made the very highest profession and occupied the loftiest platform. Finally it is that awful apostasy for which is reserved the very heaviest judgments of God, the most bitter dregs in the cup of His righteous wrath. Few persons realize what nominal Christendom is today and the inevitable doom which awaits it. But our Lord gave abundant warnings of the degeneracy of the professing church and the Spirit of God testified against early corruption and foretold the failure and abuses which shall ripen into complete apostasy and which shall call down the judgments of God on Christendom” (Prophetic Studies of the International Prophetic Conference, 1886, page 169).
DO BIRDS MAKE MUSIC? (Friday Church News Notes, April 20, 2018, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, February 27, 2018: “The Bible speaks of bird calls as songs, as most of us do. However, evolutionary theory has led some scientists to say that we are merely assigning human meanings to the calls of birds. They say that the bird calls have nothing to do with real music. Ornithologists have known for some time that bird songs use the same musical scales as our music. Decades ago it was noted that some of Beethoven's work could be heard from the European blackbird. The music was the same as the opening rondo of Beethoven’s ‘Violin Concert in D, Opus 61.’ Since these birds pass their songs from generation to generation, Beethoven could have gotten the lilting music from the forefathers of today’s European blackbird! The songs of some species, like the song sparrow, follow the form of a sonata, beginning with a strong theme, then the theme is musically played with, and for a finish, the original theme is then repeated. Mozart had a starling as a pet. Once, having heard Mozart play his ‘Piano Concerto in C Major,’ the starling not only imitated it, but changed the sharps to flats! Mozart exclaimed, ‘That was beautiful!’ When the starling died, Mozart held an elaborate funeral for it. Eight days later he wrote ‘A Musical Joke,’ which contains the same elaborate structure found in starling song. Do birds make true music, as the Bible says? Contrary to what some evolutionists say, Beethoven and Mozart certainly thought they did.”
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).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tifnWiEgWgE&feature=youtu.be
MARIJUANA SMOKING LINKED TO HIGHER STROKE, HEART RISKS (Friday Church News Notes, April 20, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Pot Smoking,” Newsmax.com, Mar. 16, 2018: “A major new study claims that smoking marijuana dramatically increases a person’s risk of suffering a heart attack and other cardiovascular events. The study authors, along with top cardiologists across the country, are calling for more research into the use of medicinal and recreational cannabis in light of the startling new evidence. Researchers found that over a 5-year period, regular users as young as in their early 30s were 4.6 times more likely to have a cardiac-related illness than those who did not smoke the drug. Scientists from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio presented their findings at the recent American College of Cardiology (ACC) conference held in Washington, D.C. ... While most medical concerns over the use of cannabis have been linked to mental disorders and depression, researchers also discovered a link between marijuana use and increased risk of stroke and heart failure. ‘Even when we corrected for known risk factors, we still found a higher rate of both stroke and heart failure in those patients using the drug,’ says Dr. Aditi Kalla, a cardiologist at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. ‘That leads us to believe that there is something else going on besides just obesity and or diet-related cardiovascular side effects.’ Researchers found that marijuana use was independently associated with a 26 percent increased risk of stroke and a 10 percent increase in heart failure. Kalla noted that medical or recreational marijuana use is legal in more than half of U.S. States so a better understanding of its ill effects is needed. ‘While the studies did not show a direct cause and effect between pot use and cardiovascular events, the statistics do present an association which means we need more studies,’ Dr. Kevin Campbell, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based cardiologist tells Newsmax Health. ‘We already know that smoking marijuana damages the lining of the lungs and can adversely affect the liver. We need to investigate the correlation between pot and heart disease especially now with the push to legalize the drug across the country.’”
THE BROCCOLI TREE (Friday Church News Notes, April 20, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In May 2013, Patrik Svedberg posted the photo of a lone tree on a Swedish lakeshore, a tree that looks a bit like broccoli. As months passed, he uploaded more photos of the tree, in different weather conditions, at different times of year, with different social events occurring in its vicinity. Eleven months after the first photo was posted, Svedberg gave it its own Instagram and began photographing it several times a week. His followers increased to thousands and in the summer of 2015 he held an exhibition of Broccoli Tree photos at the Broccoli Tree. A Broccoli Tree calendar and Broccoli Tree prints became popular. By 2016, the Broccoli Tree was so famous that it became a tourist attraction. Google Maps created a street view of the tree. By 2017, the Broccoli Tree Instagram had 27,000 followers, but on September 27 of that year, someone nearly severed one of the main trunks of the tree with a saw and it had to be cut down. There are many lessons to this story. The beautiful tree itself points to God’s creative power and love of beauty and care for man. We are reminded that men love the creation even though they reject the Creator. As the Bible puts it, they worship and serve “the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). The Broccoli Tree is also an illustration of the transformation of society in the Internet age and the power of social media in general and of Instagram in particular. The destruction of the tree reminds us that we live in a fallen world. The Broccoli Tree is a remnant of Eden, but man no longer lives in Eden because he rebelled against His compassionate Creator. This world is no longer Eden, and men are no longer innocent and sinless Adams. Finally, the Broccoli Tree reminds us of salvation. It was a tree upon which the Son of God suffered and bled and died to atone for man’s sin so that sinners might be reconciled with a holy God.
INSIGHTFUL 19TH-CENTURY WARNING OF APOSTASY (Friday Church News Notes, April 20, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - At the 1886 International Prophetic Conference in Chicago, Baptist Pastor A.J. Frost delivered the following insightful warning about apostasy. He wasn’t a prophet; he was a man who believed the Word of God literally. The leavening of which he warned is almost complete. “The final and well-nigh universal apostasy of Christendom is repeatedly foretold in the Scriptures. This dispensation like all that have preceded it will end in the most fearful apostasy this world has ever known to be immediately followed by the overwhelming judgments of God. ... In the Laodicean age of the church we find indifference and lukewarmness; a most nauseating condition! ... At this stage nearly all Christendom will be leavened with false doctrine; it is already rapidly working. The nominal Christian world will be one vast mass of baptized profession; a corrupt, mysterious mixture, a spiritual malformation, a masterpiece of Satan the corruption of the truth of God, and the destroyer of the souls of men, a trap, a snare, a stumbling block, the darkest moral blot in the universe of God! It is the corruption of the very best thing and therefore the worst kind of corruption. It is that thing which Satan has made of professing Christianity. It is worse by far than Judaism, worse by far than all the darkest forms of paganism, because it has had higher light and richer privileges, made the very highest profession and occupied the loftiest platform. Finally it is that awful apostasy for which is reserved the very heaviest judgments of God, the most bitter dregs in the cup of His righteous wrath. Few persons realize what nominal Christendom is today and the inevitable doom which awaits it. But our Lord gave abundant warnings of the degeneracy of the professing church and the Spirit of God testified against early corruption and foretold the failure and abuses which shall ripen into complete apostasy and which shall call down the judgments of God on Christendom” (Prophetic Studies of the International Prophetic Conference, 1886, page 169).
DO BIRDS MAKE MUSIC? (Friday Church News Notes, April 20, 2018, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, February 27, 2018: “The Bible speaks of bird calls as songs, as most of us do. However, evolutionary theory has led some scientists to say that we are merely assigning human meanings to the calls of birds. They say that the bird calls have nothing to do with real music. Ornithologists have known for some time that bird songs use the same musical scales as our music. Decades ago it was noted that some of Beethoven's work could be heard from the European blackbird. The music was the same as the opening rondo of Beethoven’s ‘Violin Concert in D, Opus 61.’ Since these birds pass their songs from generation to generation, Beethoven could have gotten the lilting music from the forefathers of today’s European blackbird! The songs of some species, like the song sparrow, follow the form of a sonata, beginning with a strong theme, then the theme is musically played with, and for a finish, the original theme is then repeated. Mozart had a starling as a pet. Once, having heard Mozart play his ‘Piano Concerto in C Major,’ the starling not only imitated it, but changed the sharps to flats! Mozart exclaimed, ‘That was beautiful!’ When the starling died, Mozart held an elaborate funeral for it. Eight days later he wrote ‘A Musical Joke,’ which contains the same elaborate structure found in starling song. Do birds make true music, as the Bible says? Contrary to what some evolutionists say, Beethoven and Mozart certainly thought they did.”
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).
_____
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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