Friday Church News Notes
Volume 20, Issue 33 - August 16, 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.
YOUTUBE CENSORS HARVARD PROFESSOR ALAN DERSHOWITZ AND DENNIS PRAGER’S VIDEO ON THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (Friday Church News Notes, August 16, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Dennis Prager on Google restricting PragerU videos,” Fox News, Aug. 7, 2019: “Radio host and PragerU President Dennis Prager said Wednesday on ‘Fox & Friends’ that freedom of speech is being threatened by Google, pointing out content from his own platform that has repeatedly been restricted by YouTube. In a new Wall Street Journal column, Prager wrote that a video called ‘The Charlottesville Lie,’ from CNN’s Steve Cortes, was quickly moved to the ‘restricted list’ on Monday just hours after it was posted. ‘This happened two weeks after a Senate hearing at which a Google representative swore under oath that the company doesn’t censor based on political views,’ he wrote. ... Prager added that the video was also removed from Twitter after complaints from the left. He explained that a video from Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz called ‘Israel’s Legal Founding’ was also placed on the restricted list by Google-owned YouTube, along with Prager’s own video about the Ten Commandments. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, asked a Google representative at a recent hearing how ‘The Ten Commandments: What You Should Know’ made it onto a restricted list. The man said with a straight face, ‘because it mentions murder.’ ... Prager said Dershowitz told him in the upcoming film No Safe Spaces that he fears the left ‘much more than the right.’”
ILLINOIS PASSES LAW REQUIRING LGBT HISTORY CURRICULUM (Friday Church News Notes, August 16, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Illinois Passes Law,” The Hill, Aug. 10, 2019: “Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed legislation ensuring state schools teach the role and contributions of LGBT people in American history. Pritzker signed off on House Bill 346, which was recently passed by state House earlier this year, on Friday. The law requires all schools in the state include ‘the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this State’ in official textbooks. The state’s Board of Education is also required to publish a list of the textbooks authorized to be purchased under the law annually. ‘Each public school district and state-recognized, non-public school shall, subject to appropriations for that purpose, receive a per pupil grant for the purchase of secular and non-discriminatory textbooks,’ the bill text reads. The bill also includes a section that allows the department to adopt rules ‘as necessary’ for the implementation of the law and ‘to ensure the religious neutrality of the textbook block grant program.’ State Sen. Heather Steans (D), who sponsored the legislation, said in a previous statement that ‘one of the best ways to overcome intolerance is through education and exposure to different people and viewpoints.’”
NEUROSCIENTISTS DECODE BRAIN SPEECH SIGNALS INTO WRITTEN TEXT (Friday Church News Notes, August 16, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Neuroscientists,” The Guardian, Jul. 30, 2019: “Doctors have turned the brain signals for speech into written sentences in a research project that aims to transform how patients with severe disabilities communicate in the future. The breakthrough is the first to demonstrate how the intention to say specific words can be extracted from brain activity and converted into text rapidly enough to keep pace with natural conversation. In its current form, the brain-reading software works only for certain sentences it has been trained on, but scientists believe it is a stepping stone towards a more powerful system that can decode in real time the words a person intends to say. Doctors at the University of California in San Francisco took on the challenge in the hope of creating a product that allows paralysed people to communicate more fluidly than using existing devices that pick up eye movements and muscle twitches to control a virtual keyboard. ... The work, funded by Facebook, was possible thanks to three epilepsy patients who were about to have neurosurgery for their condition. Before their operations went ahead, all three had a small patch of tiny electrodes placed directly on the brain for at least a week to map the origins of their seizures. During their stay in hospital, the patients, all of whom could speak normally, agreed to take part in Chang’s research. He used the electrodes to record brain activity while each patient was asked nine set questions and asked to read a list of 24 potential responses. With the recordings in hand, Chang and his team built computer models that learned to match particular patterns of brain activity to the questions the patients heard and the answers they spoke. Once trained, the software could identify almost instantly, and from brain signals alone, what question a patient heard and what response they gave, with an accuracy of 76% and 61% respectively. ... While the work is still in its infancy, Winston Chiong, a neuroethicist at UCSF who was not involved in the latest study, said it was important to debate the ethical issues such systems might raise in the future. For example, could a ‘speech neuroprosthesis’ unintentionally reveal people’s most private thoughts? Chang said that decoding what someone was openly trying to say was hard enough, and that extracting their inner thoughts was virtually impossible. ‘I have no interest in developing a technology to find out what people are thinking, even if it were possible,’ he said. ‘But if someone wants to communicate and can’t, I think we have a responsibility as scientists and clinicians to restore that most fundamental human ability.’”
DEMOCRATS USE SUPERMAJORITY IN ILLINOIS TO FAST-TRACK LATE-TERM BABY MURDER LAW (Friday Church News Notes, August 16, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Illinois gov. signs ‘extreme’ abortion bill,” The Christian Post, June 12, 2019: “Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law on Wednesday a bill that pro-lifers are calling the most ‘extreme’ late-term abortion measure in the country. ‘The governor and the Democratic supermajorities who fast-tracked this legislation have created a new death penalty in Illinois, with no possibility of appeal, for viable unborn preemies,’ said Peter Breen, former Illinois representative and vice president of Thomas More Society, in a statement. The Reproductive Health Act, or SB 25, establishes a fundamental right to have an abortion while removing all rights from the unborn. It repeals the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, legalizing late-term abortion, even when there is fetal viability, ‘to protect the life or health of the patient.’ The bill broadens the definition of ‘health of the patient’ to include (but not limited to) physical, emotional, psychological and familial health and age. ‘This bill is a horrible contradiction of fundamental scientific truths and the work that I do every single day,’ said Emily Kelly, a neonatal ICU nurse at a major Chicago hospital, according to Illinois Right to Life. ‘Under this law, every single one of my patients could be legally killed in utero in our state.’ Other provisions in the Reproductive Health Act include requiring private insurance companies to cover abortion with no exceptions for religious institutions explicitly made in the bill and allowing non-physicians, such as advanced practice registered nurses, to perform abortions. ... Gov. Pritzker said the new law is a ‘giant step forward for women’s health.’ ... ‘The legacy of this governor, and any legislator who voted to pass this law, will be that of cruel dehumanization of unborn Illinoisans on a mass scale,’ said Breen. ‘They will bear the legacy of thousands of late-term dismemberment abortions inflicted on perfectly healthy, viable children.’”
TRANSEXUAL POWERLIFTER STRIPPED OF WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP TITLES (Friday Church News Notes, August 16, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Female Trans Powerlifter,” Daily Wire, May 12, 2019: “Male-to-female transgender powerlifter Mary Gregory has been stripped of several women's championship titles after the Powerlifting Federation determined that Gregory was not eligible to compete as a female. ... in April Gregory set world records in the women’s squat, bench press, and deadlift, and had earned a ‘Masters total world record’ for her powerlifting scores across the board. ... But on Friday, the same 100% Raw Powerlifting Federation announced that Gregory would be stripped of her currently held titles because, it seems, the board does not consider Gregory sufficiently female, Hot Air reports. ... Federation president Paul Bossi said in a statement to media. ‘Our rules, and the basis of separating genders for competition, are based on physiological classification rather than identification.’ ... In a vote held late last week, USA Powerlifting passed a policy banning transitioning athletes from competing against athletes that match their ‘gender identity’ by a vote of 46-5. The board explained the policy by referencing the specific advantage that male athletes (even those transitioning to female) hold over biological females. ‘Men naturally have a larger bone structure, higher bone density, stronger connective tissue and higher muscle density than women,’ the board wrote. ‘These traits, even with reduced levels of testosterone do not go away. While MTF may be weaker and less muscle than they once were, the biological benefits given them at birth still remain over than of a female.’ Transgender athletes competing against the gender of their choice has become a prominent issue in the world of sports, particularly in the world of high school sports.”
THE BLESSING OF REPROOF (Friday Church News Notes, August 16, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - It has been said, “He who corrects me gives me a gold coin.” Proverbs teaches that the wise individual will receive godly reproof. One’s attitude toward such reproof is evidence of his spiritual condition. “He is in the way of life that keepeth instruction: but he that refuseth reproof erreth” (Pr. 10:17). “Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth reproof is brutish” (Pr. 12:1). “Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth instruction: but he that regardeth reproof shall be honoured” (Pr. 13:18). “A fool despiseth his father’s instruction: but he that regardeth reproof is prudent” (Pr. 15:5). “Correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way: and he that hateth reproof shall die” (Pr. 15:10). “The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise” (Pr. 15:31). “He that refuseth instruction despiseth his own soul: but he that heareth reproof getteth understanding” (Pr. 15:32). “A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool” (Pr. 17:10). “As an earring of gold, and an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon an obedient ear” (Pr. 25:12).
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).
ILLINOIS PASSES LAW REQUIRING LGBT HISTORY CURRICULUM (Friday Church News Notes, August 16, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Illinois Passes Law,” The Hill, Aug. 10, 2019: “Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed legislation ensuring state schools teach the role and contributions of LGBT people in American history. Pritzker signed off on House Bill 346, which was recently passed by state House earlier this year, on Friday. The law requires all schools in the state include ‘the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this State’ in official textbooks. The state’s Board of Education is also required to publish a list of the textbooks authorized to be purchased under the law annually. ‘Each public school district and state-recognized, non-public school shall, subject to appropriations for that purpose, receive a per pupil grant for the purchase of secular and non-discriminatory textbooks,’ the bill text reads. The bill also includes a section that allows the department to adopt rules ‘as necessary’ for the implementation of the law and ‘to ensure the religious neutrality of the textbook block grant program.’ State Sen. Heather Steans (D), who sponsored the legislation, said in a previous statement that ‘one of the best ways to overcome intolerance is through education and exposure to different people and viewpoints.’”
NEUROSCIENTISTS DECODE BRAIN SPEECH SIGNALS INTO WRITTEN TEXT (Friday Church News Notes, August 16, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Neuroscientists,” The Guardian, Jul. 30, 2019: “Doctors have turned the brain signals for speech into written sentences in a research project that aims to transform how patients with severe disabilities communicate in the future. The breakthrough is the first to demonstrate how the intention to say specific words can be extracted from brain activity and converted into text rapidly enough to keep pace with natural conversation. In its current form, the brain-reading software works only for certain sentences it has been trained on, but scientists believe it is a stepping stone towards a more powerful system that can decode in real time the words a person intends to say. Doctors at the University of California in San Francisco took on the challenge in the hope of creating a product that allows paralysed people to communicate more fluidly than using existing devices that pick up eye movements and muscle twitches to control a virtual keyboard. ... The work, funded by Facebook, was possible thanks to three epilepsy patients who were about to have neurosurgery for their condition. Before their operations went ahead, all three had a small patch of tiny electrodes placed directly on the brain for at least a week to map the origins of their seizures. During their stay in hospital, the patients, all of whom could speak normally, agreed to take part in Chang’s research. He used the electrodes to record brain activity while each patient was asked nine set questions and asked to read a list of 24 potential responses. With the recordings in hand, Chang and his team built computer models that learned to match particular patterns of brain activity to the questions the patients heard and the answers they spoke. Once trained, the software could identify almost instantly, and from brain signals alone, what question a patient heard and what response they gave, with an accuracy of 76% and 61% respectively. ... While the work is still in its infancy, Winston Chiong, a neuroethicist at UCSF who was not involved in the latest study, said it was important to debate the ethical issues such systems might raise in the future. For example, could a ‘speech neuroprosthesis’ unintentionally reveal people’s most private thoughts? Chang said that decoding what someone was openly trying to say was hard enough, and that extracting their inner thoughts was virtually impossible. ‘I have no interest in developing a technology to find out what people are thinking, even if it were possible,’ he said. ‘But if someone wants to communicate and can’t, I think we have a responsibility as scientists and clinicians to restore that most fundamental human ability.’”
DEMOCRATS USE SUPERMAJORITY IN ILLINOIS TO FAST-TRACK LATE-TERM BABY MURDER LAW (Friday Church News Notes, August 16, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Illinois gov. signs ‘extreme’ abortion bill,” The Christian Post, June 12, 2019: “Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law on Wednesday a bill that pro-lifers are calling the most ‘extreme’ late-term abortion measure in the country. ‘The governor and the Democratic supermajorities who fast-tracked this legislation have created a new death penalty in Illinois, with no possibility of appeal, for viable unborn preemies,’ said Peter Breen, former Illinois representative and vice president of Thomas More Society, in a statement. The Reproductive Health Act, or SB 25, establishes a fundamental right to have an abortion while removing all rights from the unborn. It repeals the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, legalizing late-term abortion, even when there is fetal viability, ‘to protect the life or health of the patient.’ The bill broadens the definition of ‘health of the patient’ to include (but not limited to) physical, emotional, psychological and familial health and age. ‘This bill is a horrible contradiction of fundamental scientific truths and the work that I do every single day,’ said Emily Kelly, a neonatal ICU nurse at a major Chicago hospital, according to Illinois Right to Life. ‘Under this law, every single one of my patients could be legally killed in utero in our state.’ Other provisions in the Reproductive Health Act include requiring private insurance companies to cover abortion with no exceptions for religious institutions explicitly made in the bill and allowing non-physicians, such as advanced practice registered nurses, to perform abortions. ... Gov. Pritzker said the new law is a ‘giant step forward for women’s health.’ ... ‘The legacy of this governor, and any legislator who voted to pass this law, will be that of cruel dehumanization of unborn Illinoisans on a mass scale,’ said Breen. ‘They will bear the legacy of thousands of late-term dismemberment abortions inflicted on perfectly healthy, viable children.’”
TRANSEXUAL POWERLIFTER STRIPPED OF WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP TITLES (Friday Church News Notes, August 16, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Female Trans Powerlifter,” Daily Wire, May 12, 2019: “Male-to-female transgender powerlifter Mary Gregory has been stripped of several women's championship titles after the Powerlifting Federation determined that Gregory was not eligible to compete as a female. ... in April Gregory set world records in the women’s squat, bench press, and deadlift, and had earned a ‘Masters total world record’ for her powerlifting scores across the board. ... But on Friday, the same 100% Raw Powerlifting Federation announced that Gregory would be stripped of her currently held titles because, it seems, the board does not consider Gregory sufficiently female, Hot Air reports. ... Federation president Paul Bossi said in a statement to media. ‘Our rules, and the basis of separating genders for competition, are based on physiological classification rather than identification.’ ... In a vote held late last week, USA Powerlifting passed a policy banning transitioning athletes from competing against athletes that match their ‘gender identity’ by a vote of 46-5. The board explained the policy by referencing the specific advantage that male athletes (even those transitioning to female) hold over biological females. ‘Men naturally have a larger bone structure, higher bone density, stronger connective tissue and higher muscle density than women,’ the board wrote. ‘These traits, even with reduced levels of testosterone do not go away. While MTF may be weaker and less muscle than they once were, the biological benefits given them at birth still remain over than of a female.’ Transgender athletes competing against the gender of their choice has become a prominent issue in the world of sports, particularly in the world of high school sports.”
THE BLESSING OF REPROOF (Friday Church News Notes, August 16, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - It has been said, “He who corrects me gives me a gold coin.” Proverbs teaches that the wise individual will receive godly reproof. One’s attitude toward such reproof is evidence of his spiritual condition. “He is in the way of life that keepeth instruction: but he that refuseth reproof erreth” (Pr. 10:17). “Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth reproof is brutish” (Pr. 12:1). “Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth instruction: but he that regardeth reproof shall be honoured” (Pr. 13:18). “A fool despiseth his father’s instruction: but he that regardeth reproof is prudent” (Pr. 15:5). “Correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way: and he that hateth reproof shall die” (Pr. 15:10). “The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise” (Pr. 15:31). “He that refuseth instruction despiseth his own soul: but he that heareth reproof getteth understanding” (Pr. 15:32). “A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool” (Pr. 17:10). “As an earring of gold, and an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon an obedient ear” (Pr. 25:12).
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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