Way of Life Literature
Publisher of Bible Study Materials
Way of Life Literature
Publisher of Bible Study Materials
Friday Church News Notes
Volume 20, Issue 39 - September 27 , 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.
Rutgers Presbyterian Church in Manhattan
ONE-WORLD CHURCH CONGREGATION IN MANHATTAN (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Rutgers Presbyterian Church in Manhattan is on the radical side of the one-world church. It brings together Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Jews, New Agers, even atheists around the themes of social justice and saving the earth (“What Draws Atheists, Jews and Catholics to a Presbyterian Church,” New York Times, Sept. 6, 2019). The congregation is involved in such things as climate change activism, homosexual rights, and Black Lives Matters. Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags adorn the church, and visitors can choose from a variety of buttons to wear declaring their “gender identity: he/him, she/her, they/them.” One female attendee, Clare Hogenauer, appeared some years ago in Times Square topless to protest the death penalty. She told the New York Times that she does not consider herself a Christian, but she does “believe Jesus was a good guy.” When she shares her health issues with the congregation, she doesn’t ask for prayers. The one-world church is a big house with many rooms, and the walls are permeable. Evangelicals are in a different part of the house, but they share some fundamental things with Rutgers, particularly an emphasis on social justice and kingdom building and a judge not philosophy. A Rutgers’ member said that the church is constantly thinking about “ways to make the world right,” and, “It’s not just through proselytization and pointing fingers, but by working.” They all misinterpret Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” (See The Judge Not Heresy, a free eBook available from www.wayoflife.org.)
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH PLACES PAGAN DEITY IN SANCTUARY (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) Reveals Their True God,” ReformationCharlotte.org, Sep. 16, 2019: “The Sviatovid sculpture placed in the sanctuary of a New York Presbyterian church is a modern artistic rendition of an ancient Pagan god unique to Eastern Europe and was worshiped as the god of war. The sculpture, which is placed in the sanctuary of Binghampton Presbyterian Church in New York, is on display during a festival called the Luma Festival. According to the sculpture’s website, Sviatovid ‘is inspired by both a ninth-century Slavic deity, and a medieval sculpture of the same name. Sviatovid is a fifteen-foot-tall faceted totem.’ ... The festival claims that the purpose of the sculpture is ‘in keeping with the deity’s origin story, Sviatovid is on an intercontinental expedition to bring people closer together.’ ... The Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) mainline denomination is long apostate and has completely abandoned the true God of the Bible in favor of LGBTQ inclusion, feminism, and social justice.”
CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVISTS CONFESS THEIR SINS TO PLANTS AT UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Climate Crazed Seminary Confesses Sins to Plants,” PJmedia.com, Sept. 19, 2019: “On Tuesday, Union Theological Seminary hosted a chapel service in which self-identified Christians confessed their climate sins to plants. No, this is not satire from The Babylon Bee--this really happened, and the seminary is defending it without shame. The incident illustrates how dangerous climate change hysteria can become, and how important it is for Christians to actually read their Bibles and reject the syncretism of the world. ‘In worship, our community confessed the harm we've done to plants, speaking directly in repentance. This is a beautiful ritual,’ the seminary announced on Twitter. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor. ... we’re treating plants as fully created beings, divine Creation in its own right—not just something to be consumed. Because plants aren't capable of verbal response, does that mean we shouldn't engage with them? ... We need to unlearn habits of sin and death. And part of that work must be building new bridges to the natural world. And that means creating new spiritual and intellectual frameworks by which we understand and relate to the plants and animals with whom we share the planet.’”
CLIMATE CHANGE HYSTERIA CAUSING CHILDREN TO NEED PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Shrinks Are Treating Climate-Traumatized Kids,” Futurism.com, Sept. 18, 2019: “An increasing number of children in the UK are being treated by healthcare professionals for ‘eco-anxiety,’ a growing sense of fear over climate change and impending environmental disasters, the Daily Telegraph reports. ... ‘The fear is of environmental doom--that we’re all going to die,’ Caroline Hickman, executive for the Climate Psychology Alliance, told the Telegraph. ‘A lot of parents are coming into therapy asking for help with the children and it has escalated a lot this summer.’ At least partially to blame--for better or for worse--are the increasingly vocal activists rallying the public against climate change.”
PEOPLE WHO POST SELFIES SEEN AS LESS LIKABLE (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “People who post,” The Seattle Times, Aug. 30, 2019: “In a Washington State University study that will publish this fall in the Journal of Research in Personality, individuals who posted a lot of selfies were almost uniformly viewed as less likable, less successful and more insecure than people who posted more ‘posies’--that is, traditionally posed photos that appear to be taken by someone else. WSU psychology professor Chris Barry worked with WSU students, as well as collaborators from the University of Southern Mississippi, to design a project intended to measure judgments of pictures posted on Instagram. ... Across the board, the study found that people who posted more selfies were viewed to have lower self-esteem and to be more lonely, less dependable and less successful than those who posted more ‘posies,’ Barry said in a phone interview Thursday. ‘Even when two feeds had similar content, such as depictions of achievement or travel, feelings about the person who posted selfies were negative and feelings about the person who posted posies were positive,’ he said. ... A better solution, though, might be to stop being concerned about social media at all. ‘It can be very hard when we get focused on number of likes or how many followers we have or the number of interactions,’ said Keely Kolmes, a San Francisco-based psychologist with expertise in social media matters. Kolmes recommends people unplug once in a while and engage with the world around us instead.”
WOLVES, TIGERS, AND BEARS (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, Sept. 23, 2019: “God made animals according to their kind. We refer to these kinds as baramins – from two Hebrew words for created kind. God did not make lions, tigers, pumas, etc. He made felids – the technical word for members of the cat family, or felidae. Evolutionists believe in a phylogenetic tree, showing a common ancestry of animals. Creationists do not accept this common ancestry, but neither do they accept a fixity of species because species is a relatively modern concept. We would see a phylogenetic orchard where there is a branched tree for felidae, another for canidae, or dogs, and another for ursidae, or bears. However, evolutionists wish to find a common ancestor for these three families of carnivores, and they believe they have found it in a fossil bed near Dormaal, in Belgium. Originally, two teeth were found, and this suggested to the discoverers a whole new type of creature. Then some ankle bones were found, and these were assumed, because of their proximity, to be from the same animal type. So they named the creature dormaalocyon latouri and claimed it to be the ancestor of wolves, tigers and bears. Judging from its ankle bones, they have decided that the creature lived in trees, weighed two pounds and looked like a cross between a panther and a squirrel. They would appear to be led by what they desire to find. There is no evidence of this being any sort of link between these three kinds of animals. Ref: www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/tiny-ancestor-lions-tigers-bears-discovered-oh-my-flna2D11869414.”
TEETH AND TARSALS (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, Sept. 24, 2019: “In a previous Creation Moment [See ‘Wolves, Tigers, and Bears’], we discussed how a discovery of some teeth and some ankle bones, or tarsals, at Dormaal in Belgium, has led to evolutionary scientists believing they have found a missing link between dogs, cats and bears. They picture a little two-pound creature, scurrying through the branches of trees; yet, not a single complete or even nearly complete skeleton has been found. Creationist researcher Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell has explained the evolutionary thinking process involved. Evolutionary researchers made a number of assumptions which simply do not add up. First, evolutionists ASSUME that the fact that there is a wide variety of animal species on the planet, that this is actually proof that they have a common ancestor. Common ancestry is, therefore, assumed and is a basic, unshakeable belief without any real proof whatsoever. Second, they assume that comparing the features of various fossils can enable them to line them up in an evolutionary history. This is despite the fact that there has never been an observation of one kind of animal evolving into another. Third, millions of years have to be assumed in order to give time for the alleged evolution, which has never been actually observed to take place. Dr. Mitchell says, ‘There is no biological evidence for the divergence of canines, cats, and bears from a common carnivorous ancestor. ... There is no scientific justification for insisting that in the unobservable past they evolved into more complex and divergent kinds of animals from a common ancestor.’ Ref: Mitchell, E. (2014), Extinct Carnivore Ancestor of Lions and Tigers and Bears? (Oh My!)”
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).
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH PLACES PAGAN DEITY IN SANCTUARY (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) Reveals Their True God,” ReformationCharlotte.org, Sep. 16, 2019: “The Sviatovid sculpture placed in the sanctuary of a New York Presbyterian church is a modern artistic rendition of an ancient Pagan god unique to Eastern Europe and was worshiped as the god of war. The sculpture, which is placed in the sanctuary of Binghampton Presbyterian Church in New York, is on display during a festival called the Luma Festival. According to the sculpture’s website, Sviatovid ‘is inspired by both a ninth-century Slavic deity, and a medieval sculpture of the same name. Sviatovid is a fifteen-foot-tall faceted totem.’ ... The festival claims that the purpose of the sculpture is ‘in keeping with the deity’s origin story, Sviatovid is on an intercontinental expedition to bring people closer together.’ ... The Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) mainline denomination is long apostate and has completely abandoned the true God of the Bible in favor of LGBTQ inclusion, feminism, and social justice.”
CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVISTS CONFESS THEIR SINS TO PLANTS AT UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Climate Crazed Seminary Confesses Sins to Plants,” PJmedia.com, Sept. 19, 2019: “On Tuesday, Union Theological Seminary hosted a chapel service in which self-identified Christians confessed their climate sins to plants. No, this is not satire from The Babylon Bee--this really happened, and the seminary is defending it without shame. The incident illustrates how dangerous climate change hysteria can become, and how important it is for Christians to actually read their Bibles and reject the syncretism of the world. ‘In worship, our community confessed the harm we've done to plants, speaking directly in repentance. This is a beautiful ritual,’ the seminary announced on Twitter. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor. ... we’re treating plants as fully created beings, divine Creation in its own right—not just something to be consumed. Because plants aren't capable of verbal response, does that mean we shouldn't engage with them? ... We need to unlearn habits of sin and death. And part of that work must be building new bridges to the natural world. And that means creating new spiritual and intellectual frameworks by which we understand and relate to the plants and animals with whom we share the planet.’”
CLIMATE CHANGE HYSTERIA CAUSING CHILDREN TO NEED PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Shrinks Are Treating Climate-Traumatized Kids,” Futurism.com, Sept. 18, 2019: “An increasing number of children in the UK are being treated by healthcare professionals for ‘eco-anxiety,’ a growing sense of fear over climate change and impending environmental disasters, the Daily Telegraph reports. ... ‘The fear is of environmental doom--that we’re all going to die,’ Caroline Hickman, executive for the Climate Psychology Alliance, told the Telegraph. ‘A lot of parents are coming into therapy asking for help with the children and it has escalated a lot this summer.’ At least partially to blame--for better or for worse--are the increasingly vocal activists rallying the public against climate change.”
PEOPLE WHO POST SELFIES SEEN AS LESS LIKABLE (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “People who post,” The Seattle Times, Aug. 30, 2019: “In a Washington State University study that will publish this fall in the Journal of Research in Personality, individuals who posted a lot of selfies were almost uniformly viewed as less likable, less successful and more insecure than people who posted more ‘posies’--that is, traditionally posed photos that appear to be taken by someone else. WSU psychology professor Chris Barry worked with WSU students, as well as collaborators from the University of Southern Mississippi, to design a project intended to measure judgments of pictures posted on Instagram. ... Across the board, the study found that people who posted more selfies were viewed to have lower self-esteem and to be more lonely, less dependable and less successful than those who posted more ‘posies,’ Barry said in a phone interview Thursday. ‘Even when two feeds had similar content, such as depictions of achievement or travel, feelings about the person who posted selfies were negative and feelings about the person who posted posies were positive,’ he said. ... A better solution, though, might be to stop being concerned about social media at all. ‘It can be very hard when we get focused on number of likes or how many followers we have or the number of interactions,’ said Keely Kolmes, a San Francisco-based psychologist with expertise in social media matters. Kolmes recommends people unplug once in a while and engage with the world around us instead.”
WOLVES, TIGERS, AND BEARS (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, Sept. 23, 2019: “God made animals according to their kind. We refer to these kinds as baramins – from two Hebrew words for created kind. God did not make lions, tigers, pumas, etc. He made felids – the technical word for members of the cat family, or felidae. Evolutionists believe in a phylogenetic tree, showing a common ancestry of animals. Creationists do not accept this common ancestry, but neither do they accept a fixity of species because species is a relatively modern concept. We would see a phylogenetic orchard where there is a branched tree for felidae, another for canidae, or dogs, and another for ursidae, or bears. However, evolutionists wish to find a common ancestor for these three families of carnivores, and they believe they have found it in a fossil bed near Dormaal, in Belgium. Originally, two teeth were found, and this suggested to the discoverers a whole new type of creature. Then some ankle bones were found, and these were assumed, because of their proximity, to be from the same animal type. So they named the creature dormaalocyon latouri and claimed it to be the ancestor of wolves, tigers and bears. Judging from its ankle bones, they have decided that the creature lived in trees, weighed two pounds and looked like a cross between a panther and a squirrel. They would appear to be led by what they desire to find. There is no evidence of this being any sort of link between these three kinds of animals. Ref: www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/tiny-ancestor-lions-tigers-bears-discovered-oh-my-flna2D11869414.”
TEETH AND TARSALS (Friday Church News Notes, September 27, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from CreationMoments.com, Sept. 24, 2019: “In a previous Creation Moment [See ‘Wolves, Tigers, and Bears’], we discussed how a discovery of some teeth and some ankle bones, or tarsals, at Dormaal in Belgium, has led to evolutionary scientists believing they have found a missing link between dogs, cats and bears. They picture a little two-pound creature, scurrying through the branches of trees; yet, not a single complete or even nearly complete skeleton has been found. Creationist researcher Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell has explained the evolutionary thinking process involved. Evolutionary researchers made a number of assumptions which simply do not add up. First, evolutionists ASSUME that the fact that there is a wide variety of animal species on the planet, that this is actually proof that they have a common ancestor. Common ancestry is, therefore, assumed and is a basic, unshakeable belief without any real proof whatsoever. Second, they assume that comparing the features of various fossils can enable them to line them up in an evolutionary history. This is despite the fact that there has never been an observation of one kind of animal evolving into another. Third, millions of years have to be assumed in order to give time for the alleged evolution, which has never been actually observed to take place. Dr. Mitchell says, ‘There is no biological evidence for the divergence of canines, cats, and bears from a common carnivorous ancestor. ... There is no scientific justification for insisting that in the unobservable past they evolved into more complex and divergent kinds of animals from a common ancestor.’ Ref: Mitchell, E. (2014), Extinct Carnivore Ancestor of Lions and Tigers and Bears? (Oh My!)”
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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