NEW FOSSIL WITH AN IMPOSSIBLE EVOLUTIONARY EXPLANATION (Friday Church News Notes, October 19, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Evolutionists are rightly famous for their ability to spin mythological “just so” stories that explain their beliefs. (In 1902, Rudyard Kipling published Just So Stories for Little Children containing imaginative explanations for how animals got their attributes.) A new fossil on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta is an example. The fossilized Borealopelta, which is supposedly 110 million years old, is called “one of the most spectacular fossil finds of all time.” This is because it is preserved intact: skin, soft tissue, bones. It looks like a stuffed animal. It is a “heavy-set, low-slung, tank-like dinosaur” that weighed 1.5 tons and was 20 feet long (“A Dinosaur So Well Preserved,” The Atlantic, Aug. 3, 2017). The fossil was discovered in 2011 by a heavy-equipment operator working the Millennium Mine oil sand quarry in northern Alberta. After years of tedious work to extract the fossil from a 15,000-pound block that was removed from the mine, it recently went on display at the Royal Tyrrell, a museum with world-class fossils accompanied by world-class “just so” stories. Consider the explanation of how this creature was fossilized: “Somehow, this particular individual ended up at sea. Perhaps it got careless on a shoreline. Perhaps it drowned in a flood and was washed out to sea. Either way, gases started building up in its body, causing it to float belly-up. As those gases released, the dead dinosaur sank, and hit the ocean floor hard enough to leave a small crater. Before sharks had a chance to nibble it, or worms had a chance to bury into its bones, it was quickly smothered by fine sediment and sealed off from the outside world. There it remained for millions of years, until March 11, 2011, when an excavator bit into it” (Ibid.). This is an impossible explanation of the type of fossilization exhibited in the Borealopelta. Creatures don’t fossilize like this naturally. When a creature dies and sinks into the ocean, it is devoured by sea creatures, bacteria, and worms, long before it can be covered with sediment and sealed off. In fact, the fossilization exhibited in the Borealopelta is the result of an ultra-rapid, extraordinary event that happened in an ocean that once covered Alberta. That sounds exactly like the biblical flood, but evolutionary scientists would rather make up an unscientific story than give any credence to the Bible. One fine day, as prophesied in Scripture, the museums of this world will be filled with truth rather than lies. “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). The myth of evolution and the scoffers who promote it unwittingly prove that the Bible is God’s Word, because they were prophesied in the Bible 2,000 years ago. “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? ... For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:3-7).

UK SUPREME COURT RULES IN FAVOR OF CHRISTIAN BAKERS (Friday Church News Notes, October 19, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Gay Marriage Cake,” Breitbart.com, Oct. 10, 2018: “The UK’s Supreme Court ruled in favour of Northern Irish Christian bakers who declined to bake and decorate a cake with a pro-gay marriage message, with owners heralding the decision as a victory for free speech. Britain’s highest court ruled Wednesday morning that it was not discriminatory for Ashers Bakery, run by Daniel and Amy McArthur, to refuse to produce the cake with the slogan ‘Support Gay Marriage’ because it was the message of the case that they objected to, not the sexual orientation of the customer, the BBC reports. President of the Supreme Court Lady Hale said of the decision arrived at by the five justices that the McArthurs ‘would have refused to make such a cake for any customer, irrespective of their sexual orientation.’ ... ‘We are grateful to the judges and especially to God. We are particularly pleased the Supreme Court judges emphatically accepted what we’ve said all along. We did not turn down the order because of the person who made it but because of the message itself,’ Mr. McArthur said outside of London’s High Court following the ruling. ... ‘The judges gave a clear message today that couldn’t be clearer: family businesses like ours are free to focus on giving our customers the best service they can without being forced to promote their campaigns. This ruling protects freedom of speech and freedom of conscience for everyone,’ he added. The Christian Institute, which supported the couple, hailed the decision as ‘a landmark judgment for free speech.’ ... The case reflects that of a similar ruling in the United States in June where the country’s Supreme Court ruled in favour of a Colorado baker who declined to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple based on his Christian beliefs on traditional marriage, with the justices ruling that to force or punish Jack Phillips for refusing to bake the cake contravened the first amendment which protects freedom of expression.”

DRESSING UP FOR THE WHITE HOUSE AND DRESSING DOWN FOR GOD’S HOUSE (Friday Church News Notes, October 19, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - On October 11, the Christian rock group MercyMe visited the White House to participate in President Trump’s signing of the Music Modernization Act. I found it interesting that the members of the group wore traditional suits and ties for the White House, whereas they typically dress casually for God’s House, in t-shirts, untucked shirts, jeans, cargo pants, tennis shoes, and such. I am not saying that proper church clothing is a western suit and tie; I am saying that if there is any occasion on earth for which we should “dress up” according to the standards of our particular culture, it would be the formal assembly of God’s people in the house of the living God, 1 Timothy 3:15. Why dress up in church? To honor God! Though American society has become casual and “sloppy” to the extreme in my lifetime (when I was born, people still wore suits and ties and modest dresses to ball games), Americans still know what it means to “dress up” in an honorable way. They dress up for formal weddings, meals at classy restaurants, and other occasions. The New York Philharmonic Orchestra still forbids pants on female players, and most people consider a formal concert by a major orchestra to be a special event and tend to dress up for the occasion. The West Wing White House tour “has a business casual dress code (no shorts, jeans, t-shirts, open toed shoes, etc.),” and when meeting with the president, “Men should wear a suit with a clean, fresh pressed shirt or khakis and a button down, also clean and pressed; guys, make sure your shoes are shined.” The same goes for an audience with the pope: “modest dress covering the shoulders and the décolleté (cleavage), falling below the knee; men dark suit coat and solid tie.” The contemporary crowd can laugh if they please, but I agree with the following: “Style is the meaning. The music, dress, and trendy look of the contemporary Independent Baptists tell us less about their view of style and so much more about their view of God. The same can be said for most events. The way we dress tells more about the way we view the event than it does about the way we view style” (Dave Mallinak, “Gone Contemporary,” https://villagesmithysite.wordpress.com/2018/08/31/gone-contemporary).

GOOGLE MOVING TOWARD CENSORSHIP (Friday Church News Notes, October 19, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Duckduckgo.com is a good alternative to Google, and duckduckgo doesn’t track you and isn’t designed to take control of your life. The following is excerpted from “Google Admits They’re Moving towards Censorship,” Breitbart.com, Oct. 12, 2018: “In an interview with One America News Network host Jack Posobiec, Breitbart News Senior Tech reporter Allum Bokhari discussed the recent exclusive Breitbart leak of an 85-page internal Google document which states that the idea of free speech is a ‘utopian dream’ that is no longer possible, and outlines the growing crackdown of speech on social media. ‘Google said the document is just research and it doesn’t reflect company policy,’ said Bokhari. ‘That doesn’t make sense to me as an explanation because the briefing is a description of company policy, it says this is where things are going, this is the direction of travel, this is where things are moving, this is where we need to move if we want to accomplish certain things.’ ... ‘The three top things that the briefing reveals, one: they admit they are shifting towards censorship and Silicon Valley as a whole is shifting towards censorship. Two: they admit that they, Twitter and Facebook now control the majority of online conversation and three: they make the business case for censorship. They say you need to censor in order to protect advertisers from controversy and you need to censor in order to maintain global expansion.’”

THE HUMAN BRAIN (Friday Church News Notes, October 19, 2018, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Christof Koch, chief scientist and president of the Allen Institute for Brian Science, says, “The brain is by far the most complex piece of highly excitable matter in the known universe by any measure. We don’t even understand the brain of a worm” (The New York Times, Oct. 15, 2018, p. A3). The information in the brain equals that contained in 20 million separate books (George Cahill, Science Digest, Vol. 89, issue 3, 1981, p. 105). It has about 200 billion nerve cells with hundreds of trillions of connections called synapses. Each synapse functions like a microprocessor “with both memory-storage and information-processing elements” (Cornelius Hunter, “More Switches Than the Internet,” Darwin’s God, Nov. 17, 2010). One synapse may contain 1,000 switches. In the cerebral cortex alone there are 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars would fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies. “The brain’s total number of connections rivals the stars of the universe in number, yet the connections follow an orderly plan” (Alan Gillen, Body by Design, p. 87). There are 100 billion glia cells which provide the biological “batteries” for brain activity (The Revelation of God and Nature). The brain receives signals from 137 million light receptors in the eyes, 100,000 hearing receptors in the ears, 10,000 taste buds, 5-6 million odor detecting cells, 30,000 heat sensors on the skin, 250,000 cold sensors, and 500,000 touch sensors (adapted from Bert Thompson, The Revelation of God and Nature). The hearing receptors alone send up to 25,000 auditory signals per second to the brain, which interprets them as voices, thunder, music, or a million other sounds (Jackson, The Human Body). The brain receives 20% of all of the blood pumped from the heart. The brain produces over 50 different complex drugs needed to control our body, emotions, and thoughts. For example, endorphin, the brain’s pain-killer, is three times more potent than morphine (A Closer Look at the Evidence).

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).