Friday Church News Notes
Volume 20, Issue 25 - June 21, 2019
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.
David Cloud, 1972
I WAS ABUSED IN THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION (Friday Church News Notes, June 21, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The 2019 annual Southern Baptist Convention was held in Birmingham, Alabama, June 11-12. There were 8,183 messengers from associated churches (meaning churches that contribute to the SBC Cooperation Program). “Southern Baptists acted in support of sexual abuse survivors, embraced ethnic and gender diversity and rallied around the Great Commission” (“Wrap-up: SBC supports survivors, embraced diversity,” Baptist Press, June 13, 2019). An amendment was approved stating that sexual abuse is grounds for a church to be deemed “not in friendly cooperation” with the convention. Recent reports have found evidence of cover ups of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist congregations, and the Convention is trying to deal with it. But they are dealing with it in a typically ineffectual denominational way which fails to address the root causes, which are rampant unregeneracy, terrible worldliness, lack of courageous pastoral leadership, lack of serious discipleship, frightful biblical ignorance, and near nonexistence of church discipline. Sexual abuse aside, thinking back on my childhood and youth in Southern Baptist churches, it is clear that I was terribly abused. I was abused by pastors who didn’t preach the whole counsel of God, who didn’t rebuke sin forthrightly and didn’t warn of error plainly, seemingly fearing man more than God, who didn’t exercise discipline, who received people into the membership who had absolutely no intention of being faithful disciples of Christ, therefore polluting and weakening the spiritual atmosphere of the assembly, who let the deacons and their wives run the church, who didn’t deal with me wisely and carefully about being born again, instead, accepting a flimsy profession as salvation and receiving me into church membership when there was zero evidence that I had been converted, who didn’t teach me how to be a serious Bible student and failed, therefore, to introduce me into the unspeakable beauty of God’s infinite Word (the Bible seemed, rather, to be a bunch of old stories that were irrelevant to my life), who depended on weak denominational literature instead of teaching the pure Word of God and all of the Word of God, who never supported a real foreign missionary and never even introduced us to one, leaving that business to a faceless denomination, who didn’t preach separation from the world, who allowed worldliness to run rampant among the youth--the youth who attended Sunday services but spent Saturday nights at rock & roll dances and drinking parties. This is wretched abuse. While I can’t blame my foolishness and rebellion on a church, there can be no doubt that a more biblical kind of church could have had a great influence on me for good.
WORLDLY, DRUNK ON ROCK & ROLL SOUTHERN BAPTIST LEADERS (Friday Church News Notes, June 21, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - At the 2019 Southern Baptist Convention in Birmingham, Alabama, top denominational leaders donned long-haired wigs and performed Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” (video) for the pleasure of the thousands of SBC pastors in attendance. The Lynyrd Skynyrd wannabes were Kevin Ezell, president of the SBC mission board, Ronnie Floyd, former SBC president and current president of the SBC Executive Committee, Paul Chitwood, president of the International Mission Board, Jamie Dew, president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and Adam Greenway, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. There is nothing godly or morally innocent about Lynyrd Skynyrd. Since their debut album in 1973, they have stood for rebellion and moral license. The main message is “live as you please,” which is to shake one’s fist at Almighty God and His holy laws. The band was named to mock a former gym teacher, Leonard Skinner, who had talked to the band members about their long hair and rebellious attitudes. The nearly meaningless song “Sweet Home Alabama” uses the name of the Lord in vain multiple times. Not to be outdone, SBC President J.D. Greear danced onstage with two other men to Whitney Houston’s filthy “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” during a youth event. The crowd “laughed and cheered” to this wicked performance. One viewer described it as follows: “Much of the dancing is sexualized, and one of the males portrays an effeminate male kneeling and dancing in submission to JD [Greear] while singing ‘when the night falls loneliness calls; oh! I wanna dance with somebody. I want to feel the heat with somebody.’ Seriously, why would two ministers be doing this?” Why? 2 Timothy 4:3-4 answers that, “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;” View video on our Vimeo channel.
SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION STILL DYING (Friday Church News Notes, June 21, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In spite of a supreme effort on the part of denominational leaders to pump the machine up by hook or crook and the introduction of marvelous new programs at each annual gathering, the Southern Baptist Convention is still dying. Spiritually, it died sometime in my childhood, if not before, but we are talking here about numbers. Between 2006 and 2018, the Southern Baptist Convention lost 1.5 million members (LifeWay Communications, 2018 Southern Baptist Convention Statistical Summary). The average weekly worship attendance was 5.3 million, but a majority of those are “Sunday morning only” Christians, and a Sunday morning only Christian, when measured biblically, is no Christian at all. (The evidence for this is a simple comparison of Sunday morning Christianity with Acts 2:41-42 Christianity.) Yet, at the very time when the SBC is in terminal decline by any biblical standard, giving is at an all-time high, totaling $11.8 BILLION for 2018! If that is not a modern Laodicea, there is no such thing. “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods...” (Revelation 3:16-17).
ARSON TERROR IN ISRAEL (Friday Church News Notes, June 21, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “ISIS Behind Fires Ravaging Israel,” Israel Today, June 11, 2019: “Pyro-terrorism is a weapon Israel’s enemies used since the end of 2016 when the first wave of huge fires rocked the Jewish state destroying most of the Carmel Forest near Haifa. The new trend continued when Hamas started the ‘Great March of Return’ in March 2018 and introduced the incendiary balloons and kites which were used to terrorize Israel’s southern regions. The latest wave of blazes which plagued the Jewish state in May and destroyed the Jewish village Mevo Modiin and has now spread to Samaria and Judea was for a large part the work of arsonists as well. The fire in Mevo Modiin left 50 families without a home and possessions, while police and the Israeli fire brigade later determined the blaze was caused by arson. Arson-terrorism has now also reached Samaria and Judea. A huge blaze in the Jewish village of Carmei Tzur in central Judea which raged on Wednesday last week and reached the outskirts of the embattled community, started after Palestinian Arab arsonists threw firebombs across the security fence, a member of the local security team told this reporter. The source said that Palestinian Arabs routinely throw firebombs across the fence near the Hamas hotbed Beit Umar, but this time they targeted the southwestern part of Carmei Tzur where there is no fence and where most people live in caravans. The huge blaze in Carmei Tzur coincided with a large fire near the Jewish village of Itamar in central Samaria. Residents of Itamar claimed that the fire was the fourth attempt in as many days to destroy their community. ‘This is the fourth fire to break out in four days, endangering residents and families, destroying years’ worth of work by farmers. The heart breaks,’ Iyar Segal a resident of Itamar told Israeli media. The media largely ignored these fires while the major news outlets in Israel blamed the wave of fires on the unprecedented heat wave which hit the Jewish state in May. Only the state-funded broadcaster KAN reported about the real reason for the wave of fires. KAN said, ‘hundreds of the fires in the last weeks in Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh area were a result of arson.’ The terror watchdog group Boomerang, furthermore, released a new video documenting the number of fires that firefighters fought since November 2016: a whopping 1,773 (Gaza-belt not included). Firefighter Ron Shlaf, who was a prominent member of the team that investigated the wave of fires, said that there’s no doubt about what caused the bulk of the blazes. ‘Yes. We’ve faced arson terror. There is no dilemma or doubt about it. All the villages that were burned were Jewish and all those arrested or prosecuted were Arabs. And from a thorough investigation we conducted, no one else in the Middle East—including the Palestinians—experienced such an extreme wave of fires like we experienced,’ Shlaf told Boomerang. Shlaf's team investigated 80 large fires since 2016 and came to the conclusion that 71 of them were the work of arson terrorists.”
FORCING MATTER TO STICK (Friday Church News Notes, June 21, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from Creation Moments, May 16, 2019: “Why doesn’t an atom fly apart? It really ought to do so. School children are taught that atoms basically contain three types of particles--protons, neutrons and electrons. The protons and neutrons are in the atomic nucleus. They are roughly the same mass, but neutrons are neutral, whereas protons have a positive electrical charge. Tiny electrons, with a negative charge, whizz around the parent atom at great speed. If you rub a balloon on your hair, you know that you can probably make it stick to a wall. The balloon will pick up a negative electrical charge. Suppose you charge two balloons, each with a string attached. Hold them hanging from your hands, and bring them close. They repel because they have the same charge. The protons in the atomic nucleus have the same positive charge. They should repel. The fact that they do not do so suggests that there is a stronger force present keeping the protons together, even though the electric charge wants to push them apart. This strong force does not have a large sphere of influence. It only seems to operate when objects are 10-15m apart. At such a small distance, the strong force seems to be 137 times stronger than the electrical force. Outside this distance, the electromagnetic force is stronger, so the protons would push each other away. God has balanced these forces exactly. If the strong force were a little weaker, then large atoms would easily fall apart. If a little stronger, then no chemical reactions would occur. Ref: Britannica.com/science/strong-force.”
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).
WORLDLY, DRUNK ON ROCK & ROLL SOUTHERN BAPTIST LEADERS (Friday Church News Notes, June 21, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - At the 2019 Southern Baptist Convention in Birmingham, Alabama, top denominational leaders donned long-haired wigs and performed Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” (video) for the pleasure of the thousands of SBC pastors in attendance. The Lynyrd Skynyrd wannabes were Kevin Ezell, president of the SBC mission board, Ronnie Floyd, former SBC president and current president of the SBC Executive Committee, Paul Chitwood, president of the International Mission Board, Jamie Dew, president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and Adam Greenway, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. There is nothing godly or morally innocent about Lynyrd Skynyrd. Since their debut album in 1973, they have stood for rebellion and moral license. The main message is “live as you please,” which is to shake one’s fist at Almighty God and His holy laws. The band was named to mock a former gym teacher, Leonard Skinner, who had talked to the band members about their long hair and rebellious attitudes. The nearly meaningless song “Sweet Home Alabama” uses the name of the Lord in vain multiple times. Not to be outdone, SBC President J.D. Greear danced onstage with two other men to Whitney Houston’s filthy “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” during a youth event. The crowd “laughed and cheered” to this wicked performance. One viewer described it as follows: “Much of the dancing is sexualized, and one of the males portrays an effeminate male kneeling and dancing in submission to JD [Greear] while singing ‘when the night falls loneliness calls; oh! I wanna dance with somebody. I want to feel the heat with somebody.’ Seriously, why would two ministers be doing this?” Why? 2 Timothy 4:3-4 answers that, “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;” View video on our Vimeo channel.
SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION STILL DYING (Friday Church News Notes, June 21, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In spite of a supreme effort on the part of denominational leaders to pump the machine up by hook or crook and the introduction of marvelous new programs at each annual gathering, the Southern Baptist Convention is still dying. Spiritually, it died sometime in my childhood, if not before, but we are talking here about numbers. Between 2006 and 2018, the Southern Baptist Convention lost 1.5 million members (LifeWay Communications, 2018 Southern Baptist Convention Statistical Summary). The average weekly worship attendance was 5.3 million, but a majority of those are “Sunday morning only” Christians, and a Sunday morning only Christian, when measured biblically, is no Christian at all. (The evidence for this is a simple comparison of Sunday morning Christianity with Acts 2:41-42 Christianity.) Yet, at the very time when the SBC is in terminal decline by any biblical standard, giving is at an all-time high, totaling $11.8 BILLION for 2018! If that is not a modern Laodicea, there is no such thing. “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods...” (Revelation 3:16-17).
ARSON TERROR IN ISRAEL (Friday Church News Notes, June 21, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “ISIS Behind Fires Ravaging Israel,” Israel Today, June 11, 2019: “Pyro-terrorism is a weapon Israel’s enemies used since the end of 2016 when the first wave of huge fires rocked the Jewish state destroying most of the Carmel Forest near Haifa. The new trend continued when Hamas started the ‘Great March of Return’ in March 2018 and introduced the incendiary balloons and kites which were used to terrorize Israel’s southern regions. The latest wave of blazes which plagued the Jewish state in May and destroyed the Jewish village Mevo Modiin and has now spread to Samaria and Judea was for a large part the work of arsonists as well. The fire in Mevo Modiin left 50 families without a home and possessions, while police and the Israeli fire brigade later determined the blaze was caused by arson. Arson-terrorism has now also reached Samaria and Judea. A huge blaze in the Jewish village of Carmei Tzur in central Judea which raged on Wednesday last week and reached the outskirts of the embattled community, started after Palestinian Arab arsonists threw firebombs across the security fence, a member of the local security team told this reporter. The source said that Palestinian Arabs routinely throw firebombs across the fence near the Hamas hotbed Beit Umar, but this time they targeted the southwestern part of Carmei Tzur where there is no fence and where most people live in caravans. The huge blaze in Carmei Tzur coincided with a large fire near the Jewish village of Itamar in central Samaria. Residents of Itamar claimed that the fire was the fourth attempt in as many days to destroy their community. ‘This is the fourth fire to break out in four days, endangering residents and families, destroying years’ worth of work by farmers. The heart breaks,’ Iyar Segal a resident of Itamar told Israeli media. The media largely ignored these fires while the major news outlets in Israel blamed the wave of fires on the unprecedented heat wave which hit the Jewish state in May. Only the state-funded broadcaster KAN reported about the real reason for the wave of fires. KAN said, ‘hundreds of the fires in the last weeks in Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh area were a result of arson.’ The terror watchdog group Boomerang, furthermore, released a new video documenting the number of fires that firefighters fought since November 2016: a whopping 1,773 (Gaza-belt not included). Firefighter Ron Shlaf, who was a prominent member of the team that investigated the wave of fires, said that there’s no doubt about what caused the bulk of the blazes. ‘Yes. We’ve faced arson terror. There is no dilemma or doubt about it. All the villages that were burned were Jewish and all those arrested or prosecuted were Arabs. And from a thorough investigation we conducted, no one else in the Middle East—including the Palestinians—experienced such an extreme wave of fires like we experienced,’ Shlaf told Boomerang. Shlaf's team investigated 80 large fires since 2016 and came to the conclusion that 71 of them were the work of arson terrorists.”
FORCING MATTER TO STICK (Friday Church News Notes, June 21, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from Creation Moments, May 16, 2019: “Why doesn’t an atom fly apart? It really ought to do so. School children are taught that atoms basically contain three types of particles--protons, neutrons and electrons. The protons and neutrons are in the atomic nucleus. They are roughly the same mass, but neutrons are neutral, whereas protons have a positive electrical charge. Tiny electrons, with a negative charge, whizz around the parent atom at great speed. If you rub a balloon on your hair, you know that you can probably make it stick to a wall. The balloon will pick up a negative electrical charge. Suppose you charge two balloons, each with a string attached. Hold them hanging from your hands, and bring them close. They repel because they have the same charge. The protons in the atomic nucleus have the same positive charge. They should repel. The fact that they do not do so suggests that there is a stronger force present keeping the protons together, even though the electric charge wants to push them apart. This strong force does not have a large sphere of influence. It only seems to operate when objects are 10-15m apart. At such a small distance, the strong force seems to be 137 times stronger than the electrical force. Outside this distance, the electromagnetic force is stronger, so the protons would push each other away. God has balanced these forces exactly. If the strong force were a little weaker, then large atoms would easily fall apart. If a little stronger, then no chemical reactions would occur. Ref: Britannica.com/science/strong-force.”
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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