Friday Church News Notes
Volume 20, Issue 28 - July 12, 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.
TRASHING AMERICA’S FOUNDING FATHERS (Friday Church News Notes, July 12, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - A large percentage of Americans have been brainwashed to hate the nation’s Founding Fathers. The latest evidence is the decision by the San Francisco Board of Education to paint over a 13-panel mural of scenes from George Washington’s life at George Washington High School, because of the “violent” and “degrading” imagery (“San Francisco school board votes to paint over,” Washington Post, June 28, 2019). One panel shows frontiersmen standing by the dead body of a Native American, while another shows Washington at Mount Vernon among his slaves. The painting simply depicts the reality of America in the 18th century, which was far from perfect but also far more committed to human rights than any other nation at that time! The Leftist elites and their pop culture minions who are trashing the Founding Fathers are ignorant of history, as well as hateful of the Bible upon which America was founded, which is the fundamental issue. America’s Founding Fathers were not perfect. There was only one Perfect Man in human history. But the Founding Fathers were ground-breaking pioneers in human rights. What other nation in the 18th century did better? What other nation produced a Bill of Rights like America’s? What other nation fought a terrible Civil War to finally bring those rights to all citizens? There was widespread opposition to slavery from the time of the founding of the American colonies, and many of the Founding Fathers were opponents, but abolition became a groundswell movement during the Second Great Awakening, both in America and England. It was the Bible that taught the British and the Americans to renounce slavery. The culmination in America was the Civil War of 1860-65. The Democratic Party was the party of Southern slavery. The Republican Party was founded in 1856 as a coalition of political groups opposing slavery, and Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1860, was the first Republican Party president. Eleven Democrat-controlled states seceded from the Union following his election. It was a Republican president who issued the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, and it was a Republican-controlled Congress that passed the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery in 1865. What great nation have the Leftist elites built? What great nation has Atheism built? What great nation has Darwinian evolution built? What great nation have pop stars, Hollywood entertainers, and professional football players built? They build nothing; they only tear down; and even little children can destroy what wise men build.
GEORGE WASHINGTON AND SLAVERY (Friday Church News Notes, July 12, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army and America’s first President, inherited slaves and would have freed them, but he was forbidden by Virginia law to do so. At great personal cost, he vowed that he would not sell any of his slaves even though he could have benefited financially from doing so. At a time when he was struggling financially, the sale of just one slave would have brought him enough income to pay his estate taxes for two years, but he refused. He also refused to hire out his slaves, because he did not want to break up their families. He said, “To sell the overplus I cannot, because I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species. To hire them out is almost as bad because they could not be disposed of in families to any advantage, and to disperse [break up] the families I have an aversion” (Washington letter to Robert Lewis, Aug. 18, 1799, Washington’s Writings, 1980, Vol. 37, p. 338). Washington was instrumental in having a federal law passed in the first year of his presidency (1789) prohibiting slavery in the new American territories. As a result, the new states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin all prohibited slavery. Daniel Webster described Washington’s efforts to abolish slavery in America: “Soon after the adoption of the Constitution, it was declared by George Washington to be ‘among his first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery might be abolished by law’; and in various forms in public and private communications, he avowed his anxious desire that ‘a spirit of humanity,’ prompting to ‘the emancipation of the slaves,’ ‘might diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people;’ and he gave the assurance, that ‘so far as his own suffrage would go,’ his influence should not be wanting to accomplish this result” (Webster, “Address to the People of the United States, ... to Lift Our Public Sentiment to a New Platform of Anti-slavery,” Jan. 29, 1845). Washington liberated his slaves upon his death, and in his will he required that young ones be educated to read and write and taught a useful occupation.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS AND SLAVERY (Friday Church News Notes, July 12, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States and son of John Adams, second President of the U.S., was called the “Hell Hound of Abolition” for his persistent efforts to end slavery. In 1837, he said that the nation’s founders were opposed to slavery. “The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented by all the southern patriots of the Revolution; by no one with deeper and more unalterable conviction than by the author of the Declaration himself [Thomas Jefferson]. No charge of insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country [Great Britain] and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence, slavery--in common with every other mode of oppression--was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth” (“An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport, at Their request, on the Sixty-first Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,” July 4, 1837).
OTHER FOUNDING FATHERS AND SLAVERY (Friday Church News Notes, July 12, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - BENJAMIN FRANKLIN owned slaves, but he became an abolitionist later in life and liberated his slaves. He was the president of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. He promoted the idea of educating former slaves and helping them find employment so they could fend for themselves. JOHN DICKINSON was a member of the First and Second Continental Congress and worked with Thomas Jefferson in writing the Declaration of Independence. He was an officer during the War of Independence. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and was elected President of Delaware and President of Pennsylvania. Dickinson is the author of “The Liberty Song” (1768). The original chorus said, “Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all, By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall; In so righteous a cause let us hope to succeed, For heaven approves of each generous deed.” Dickinson became an abolitionist and freed his slaves in 1776. He devoted his final years to the cause of abolition and donated a considerable amount of his wealth “to the relief of the unhappy.” BENJAMIN RUSH, signer of the Declaration of Independence, denounced slavery in his tract On Slave Keeping (1773). He called it a “vice which degrades human nature.” He called on Americans to oppose it. “Remember the eyes of all Europe are fixed upon you, to preserve an asylum for freedom in this country after the last pillars of it are fallen in every other quarter of the globe.” John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1789-95), author of five of the Federalist Papers, and Governor of New York, was a leading opponent of slavery. “His first two attempts to end slavery in New York in 1777 and 1785 failed, but a third in 1799 succeeded.” All slaves in New York were emancipated before his death in 1829. NOAH WEBSTER, who had a major influence on the U.S. Constitution through his 1787 essay An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, called for slavery to be abolished in the United States. He founded an antislavery group called the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom. His influential Blue-Back Speller included an essay by Thomas Day calling for the abolition of slavery. Day argued that this was in accordance with the nation’s Declaration of Independence. He warned Americans that consistency required that they either acknowledge the rights of the Negroes or surrender their own rights.
ON ORCHIDS AND BEES (Friday Church News Notes, July 12, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from Creation Moments, July 1, 2019: “Coryanthes macrantha, commonly known as the bucket orchid, grows in Mexico and Central and South America. The pretty, but unassuming, flowers form a little receptacle or bucket, into which the flower drips a strongly scented fluid. This scent attracts the flower’s only pollinator--the beautiful, green, male orchid bee. On entering the flower, the bee falls into the bucket trap. But it is not the orchid’s purpose to kill the bee. The bee soon finds a little step, and an escape hatch. However, the flower grips the bee and glues two pollen sacks to its back. When the glue is dry, the flower releases the unharmed bee, which makes its escape. The pollen sacks and the scent are essential to the bee’s own courtship ritual with female bees. It is the orchid’s scent which is attractive to the female. If a male bee which already has pollen sacks on its back enters the bucket orchid, then the flower simply snatches the sacks off the back of the bee and releases it immediately, thus completing the flower’s rather complicated pollination process. Most articles about the orchid and the bee refer to their co-evolution, which has left them totally dependent on each other. Yet, no partially evolved orchid could survive. An orchid whose escape hatch was too big would release the bee without the pollen, while too small a hatch would trap the bee until it died. Either way, a partially evolved orchid could not pollinate. So-called co-evolution is clearly impossible. Ref: ‘Bucket Orchid,’ Encyclopedia Britannica.”
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).
GEORGE WASHINGTON AND SLAVERY (Friday Church News Notes, July 12, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army and America’s first President, inherited slaves and would have freed them, but he was forbidden by Virginia law to do so. At great personal cost, he vowed that he would not sell any of his slaves even though he could have benefited financially from doing so. At a time when he was struggling financially, the sale of just one slave would have brought him enough income to pay his estate taxes for two years, but he refused. He also refused to hire out his slaves, because he did not want to break up their families. He said, “To sell the overplus I cannot, because I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species. To hire them out is almost as bad because they could not be disposed of in families to any advantage, and to disperse [break up] the families I have an aversion” (Washington letter to Robert Lewis, Aug. 18, 1799, Washington’s Writings, 1980, Vol. 37, p. 338). Washington was instrumental in having a federal law passed in the first year of his presidency (1789) prohibiting slavery in the new American territories. As a result, the new states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin all prohibited slavery. Daniel Webster described Washington’s efforts to abolish slavery in America: “Soon after the adoption of the Constitution, it was declared by George Washington to be ‘among his first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery might be abolished by law’; and in various forms in public and private communications, he avowed his anxious desire that ‘a spirit of humanity,’ prompting to ‘the emancipation of the slaves,’ ‘might diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people;’ and he gave the assurance, that ‘so far as his own suffrage would go,’ his influence should not be wanting to accomplish this result” (Webster, “Address to the People of the United States, ... to Lift Our Public Sentiment to a New Platform of Anti-slavery,” Jan. 29, 1845). Washington liberated his slaves upon his death, and in his will he required that young ones be educated to read and write and taught a useful occupation.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS AND SLAVERY (Friday Church News Notes, July 12, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States and son of John Adams, second President of the U.S., was called the “Hell Hound of Abolition” for his persistent efforts to end slavery. In 1837, he said that the nation’s founders were opposed to slavery. “The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented by all the southern patriots of the Revolution; by no one with deeper and more unalterable conviction than by the author of the Declaration himself [Thomas Jefferson]. No charge of insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country [Great Britain] and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence, slavery--in common with every other mode of oppression--was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth” (“An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport, at Their request, on the Sixty-first Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,” July 4, 1837).
OTHER FOUNDING FATHERS AND SLAVERY (Friday Church News Notes, July 12, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - BENJAMIN FRANKLIN owned slaves, but he became an abolitionist later in life and liberated his slaves. He was the president of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. He promoted the idea of educating former slaves and helping them find employment so they could fend for themselves. JOHN DICKINSON was a member of the First and Second Continental Congress and worked with Thomas Jefferson in writing the Declaration of Independence. He was an officer during the War of Independence. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and was elected President of Delaware and President of Pennsylvania. Dickinson is the author of “The Liberty Song” (1768). The original chorus said, “Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all, By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall; In so righteous a cause let us hope to succeed, For heaven approves of each generous deed.” Dickinson became an abolitionist and freed his slaves in 1776. He devoted his final years to the cause of abolition and donated a considerable amount of his wealth “to the relief of the unhappy.” BENJAMIN RUSH, signer of the Declaration of Independence, denounced slavery in his tract On Slave Keeping (1773). He called it a “vice which degrades human nature.” He called on Americans to oppose it. “Remember the eyes of all Europe are fixed upon you, to preserve an asylum for freedom in this country after the last pillars of it are fallen in every other quarter of the globe.” John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1789-95), author of five of the Federalist Papers, and Governor of New York, was a leading opponent of slavery. “His first two attempts to end slavery in New York in 1777 and 1785 failed, but a third in 1799 succeeded.” All slaves in New York were emancipated before his death in 1829. NOAH WEBSTER, who had a major influence on the U.S. Constitution through his 1787 essay An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, called for slavery to be abolished in the United States. He founded an antislavery group called the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom. His influential Blue-Back Speller included an essay by Thomas Day calling for the abolition of slavery. Day argued that this was in accordance with the nation’s Declaration of Independence. He warned Americans that consistency required that they either acknowledge the rights of the Negroes or surrender their own rights.
ON ORCHIDS AND BEES (Friday Church News Notes, July 12, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from Creation Moments, July 1, 2019: “Coryanthes macrantha, commonly known as the bucket orchid, grows in Mexico and Central and South America. The pretty, but unassuming, flowers form a little receptacle or bucket, into which the flower drips a strongly scented fluid. This scent attracts the flower’s only pollinator--the beautiful, green, male orchid bee. On entering the flower, the bee falls into the bucket trap. But it is not the orchid’s purpose to kill the bee. The bee soon finds a little step, and an escape hatch. However, the flower grips the bee and glues two pollen sacks to its back. When the glue is dry, the flower releases the unharmed bee, which makes its escape. The pollen sacks and the scent are essential to the bee’s own courtship ritual with female bees. It is the orchid’s scent which is attractive to the female. If a male bee which already has pollen sacks on its back enters the bucket orchid, then the flower simply snatches the sacks off the back of the bee and releases it immediately, thus completing the flower’s rather complicated pollination process. Most articles about the orchid and the bee refer to their co-evolution, which has left them totally dependent on each other. Yet, no partially evolved orchid could survive. An orchid whose escape hatch was too big would release the bee without the pollen, while too small a hatch would trap the bee until it died. Either way, a partially evolved orchid could not pollinate. So-called co-evolution is clearly impossible. Ref: ‘Bucket Orchid,’ Encyclopedia Britannica.”
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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