Friday Church News Notes
Volume 21, Issue 21 - May 22, 2020
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.
DARLENE ZSCHECH SOLD HER SEASIDE MANSION FOR $4 MILLION (Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Darlene Zschech, former worship leader of Hillsong Sydney, has sold her seaside mansion for a reported $4-$4.4 million. The cliffside property, with a nearly 360 degree view of the ocean, is 1,258sqm with three levels, multiple entertainment areas, private movie theater, pool, and several cliff facing balconies (“Former Hillsong Church Leader,” Warwick Daily News, May 13, 2020). Zschech was “worship pastor” at Hills Christian Life Centre, Sydney, for 25 years, and published many of the most popular contemporary worship songs, including “Shout to the Lord,” “This Is Our God,” and “Mighty to Save.” In 2010, Darlene and her husband became the senior pastors of Hope Unlimited Church, but she continues to be involved in music projects with Hillsong. The New York Times reported that Hillsong is “without a doubt the most influential producers of worship music in Christendom” (“Megachurch with a Beat Lures Young Flock,” Sept. 9, 2014). Hillsong pushes one-world church ecumenism. Zschech says, “There is a new sound and a new song being proclaimed across the earth. It’s the sound of a unified church, coming together, in one voice to magnify our magnificent Lord” (“You Shine” album cover). Zschech and Hillsong performed for the Roman Catholic World Youth Day in Sydney on July 18, 2008. Pope Benedict XVI was present and conducted a papal mass. In July 2015, Darlene Zschech and Hillsong joined hands with the pope at the Convocation of the Renewal of the Holy Spirit at the Vatican. On her Facebook page, Zschech said: “Honoured to be singing this week, with Andrea Bocelli, Don Moen, Noa [Israeli singer], with Pope Francis and thousands of worshippers gathering in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. This is a celebration of unity and peace in the Renewal of the Holy Spirit. Amazing days for the Body of Christ.” Sadly, she doesn’t know the “body of Christ” from a pineapple, has zero spiritual discernment, yet she has vast influence among all denominations, including independent Baptist. In January 2019 and 2020, Hillsong Phoenix hosted the annual Alpha Conference which featured a Catholic mass. Fundamental Baptists and Bible-believing churches that use charismatic contemporary praise music are playing with fire. They will learn, probably too late, that this music brings with it a philosophy that will change the character of any fundamentalist church. It builds bridges to the “broader church,” which is progressing toward the formation of a “one-world church.”
WHEN HEBREW WAS PROPOSED AS THE LANGUAGE OF AMERICA (Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “How Hebrew Almost Became the Language of America,” Israel Today, May 5, 2020: “William Gifford, an English poet and essayist, received a report that ‘In the rebellion of the Colonies, a member of that state seriously proposed to Congress the putting down of the English language by law, and decreeing the universal adoption of Hebrew in its stead.’ Some believe this was intended as a mockery of the mutinous colonists, but there is sufficient evidence to show that this was a very real and serious consideration. New England Puritans held a profound connection with Israel, the Hebrew language and the Jewish people. In their conviction that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, they held the original Hebrew in great reverence and of particular importance in interpreting and understanding Scripture. ... William Bradford (1590-1657) was a Puritan separatist who immigrated to the Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower in 1620. Bradford, who went on to serve as governor of the new colony for 25 years, taught himself Hebrew because he wanted to read the Scriptures in their original language. On his gravestone he had inscribed in Hebrew, ‘The LORD is the help of my life’ ... Their love of Hebrew led these early New England Christian ministers to develop relationships with Jewish rabbis. Rev. Ezra Stiles, who was driven out by the British in 1776 and immigrated to New England, struck up a close friendship with Rabbi Haim Isaac Carigal. ... With his knowledge of Hebrew, Stiles translated large portions of the Hebrew Old Testament into English. As did many Christian ministers at the time, he understood that knowledge of the original Hebrew was crucial to the proper interpretation of Scripture and even the basis upon which one could properly understand the New Testament as well. Credit is sometimes given to Stiles for proposing that Hebrew replace English as the official language of the newly forming United States. When Stiles was elected president of Yale University, he initiated a course in Hebrew as a freshman requirement. The Hebrew words Urim and Thummim worn on the breastplate of the High Priest, perhaps signifying ‘Light and Perfection,’ became part of Yale’s official seal along with the Latin Lux et Veritas (light and truth).”
DUTCH SUPREME COURT RULES THAT DOCTORS CAN EUTHANIZE ELDERLY WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT (Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Dutch Supreme Court Rules,” Reformation Charlotte, May 6, 2020: “If abortion against the unwilling infants still inside the mother’s womb isn’t bad enough, why not legalize abortion against elderly patients with dementia against their will? In a landmark ruling last month, the Dutch Supreme Court said that a doctor who committed euthanasia on an elderly patient with dementia while her family physically restrained her is not legally responsible for any wrongdoing. The Guardian reports: ‘Doctors in the Netherlands are able to carry out euthanasia on patients with severe dementia without fear of prosecution even if the patient no longer expresses an explicit wish to die, the country’s highest court has ruled. The supreme court’s decision followed a landmark case last year in which a doctor was acquitted of wrongdoing for euthanizing a woman in 2016 with severe Alzheimer’s who had requested the procedure before her condition deteriorated.’”
NINTH CIRCUIT COURT REVIVES CHURCH’S LAWSUIT AGAINST CALIFORNIA ABORTION INSURANCE MANDATE (Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Ninth Circuit,” Christian Post, May 15, 2020: “A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has revived a California church’s lawsuit against a state law mandating insurance coverage for abortion. Skyline Wesleyan Church of La Mesa sued the California Department of Managed Health Care over letters from 2014 stating that insurance companies could not limit abortion coverage. ... The [Ninth Circuit] panel vacated the earlier district court ruling in a unanimous decision released Wednesday, sending the case back to the lower court for further proceedings. Circuit Judge Michelle Friedland authored the panel’s opinion, concluding that ‘Skyline has suffered an injury in fact. Before the Letters were sent, Skyline had insurance that excluded abortion coverage in a way that was consistent with its religious beliefs,’ Friedland wrote. ‘After the Letters were sent, Skyline did not have that coverage, and it has presented evidence that its new coverage violated its religious beliefs. There is nothing hypothetical about the situation.’ The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative law firm that represented the church before the Ninth Circuit, celebrated the panel’s decision. ‘The agency has unconstitutionally targeted religious organizations, repeatedly collaborated with pro-abortion advocates, and failed to follow the appropriate administrative procedures to implement its abortion-coverage requirement,’ said ADF Senior Counsel Jeremiah Galus.”
LOOKING FOR CHRIST’S RETURN THE MARK OF A TRUE CHRISTIAN (Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “I believe it is a mark, that every true believer should be continually at,--to live so as to be ready to meet Christ. ... It is vain to tell me that a man may be a very good man, and yet not be ready for the kingdom of Christ. I deny it altogether. I say that every justified and converted man is ready, and that if you are not ready you are not a justified man. I say that the standard I put before you is nothing more than the New Testament standard, and the Apostles would have doubted your religion, if you were not looking and longing for the coming of the Lord. ... Yet a little while and the last sermon shall be preached,--the last congregation shall break up. Yet a little while and carelessness and infidelity shall cease and pass away. The believers among us shall meet with Christ, and the unbelievers shall be in hell. The night is far spent, and the day is at hand” (J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties, 1879). “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Hebrews 9:28).
JOB AND THE STARS (Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from creationmoments.com, May 13, 2020: “One of the arguments against the acceptance of the creation account in Genesis is the notion that the Bible was written by ancient men who would not have had sufficient knowledge to understand scientific issues. For example, theistic evolutionist commentators have suggested that the author of Genesis--and they usually refuse to acknowledge that this was Moses--must have believed that the sky was a solid dome, and the sun, moon, and stars just objects of light embedded into this dome. I would obviously disagree with that artificial interpretation of the text, which such evolutionists believe must have been written later--perhaps at the time of the Exile to Babylon. The Book of Job comes from a similar time as the Book of Genesis--and I would suggest that this was at the time that Moses was alive. In Job 11:7-8, Job’s ‘friend’ Zophar states that the wisdom of God is as high as the heaven. Thus, the infinitude of God is compared to the vastness of the universe. This comment is not isolated. In Job 22:12, Eliphaz states: ‘Is not God in the height of heaven?’ and ‘Behold the height of the stars, how high they are!’ These comments are not major doctrinal statements. Instead, they show that the opinions of people as ancient as the book of Genesis did not believe the sky to be a literal solid dome. Instead, these verses suggest a scientific accuracy, unexplainable by evolutionary models of history. Ref: Henry Morris, 2000, The Remarkable Record of Job, p. 43.”
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).
WHEN HEBREW WAS PROPOSED AS THE LANGUAGE OF AMERICA (Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “How Hebrew Almost Became the Language of America,” Israel Today, May 5, 2020: “William Gifford, an English poet and essayist, received a report that ‘In the rebellion of the Colonies, a member of that state seriously proposed to Congress the putting down of the English language by law, and decreeing the universal adoption of Hebrew in its stead.’ Some believe this was intended as a mockery of the mutinous colonists, but there is sufficient evidence to show that this was a very real and serious consideration. New England Puritans held a profound connection with Israel, the Hebrew language and the Jewish people. In their conviction that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, they held the original Hebrew in great reverence and of particular importance in interpreting and understanding Scripture. ... William Bradford (1590-1657) was a Puritan separatist who immigrated to the Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower in 1620. Bradford, who went on to serve as governor of the new colony for 25 years, taught himself Hebrew because he wanted to read the Scriptures in their original language. On his gravestone he had inscribed in Hebrew, ‘The LORD is the help of my life’ ... Their love of Hebrew led these early New England Christian ministers to develop relationships with Jewish rabbis. Rev. Ezra Stiles, who was driven out by the British in 1776 and immigrated to New England, struck up a close friendship with Rabbi Haim Isaac Carigal. ... With his knowledge of Hebrew, Stiles translated large portions of the Hebrew Old Testament into English. As did many Christian ministers at the time, he understood that knowledge of the original Hebrew was crucial to the proper interpretation of Scripture and even the basis upon which one could properly understand the New Testament as well. Credit is sometimes given to Stiles for proposing that Hebrew replace English as the official language of the newly forming United States. When Stiles was elected president of Yale University, he initiated a course in Hebrew as a freshman requirement. The Hebrew words Urim and Thummim worn on the breastplate of the High Priest, perhaps signifying ‘Light and Perfection,’ became part of Yale’s official seal along with the Latin Lux et Veritas (light and truth).”
DUTCH SUPREME COURT RULES THAT DOCTORS CAN EUTHANIZE ELDERLY WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT (Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Dutch Supreme Court Rules,” Reformation Charlotte, May 6, 2020: “If abortion against the unwilling infants still inside the mother’s womb isn’t bad enough, why not legalize abortion against elderly patients with dementia against their will? In a landmark ruling last month, the Dutch Supreme Court said that a doctor who committed euthanasia on an elderly patient with dementia while her family physically restrained her is not legally responsible for any wrongdoing. The Guardian reports: ‘Doctors in the Netherlands are able to carry out euthanasia on patients with severe dementia without fear of prosecution even if the patient no longer expresses an explicit wish to die, the country’s highest court has ruled. The supreme court’s decision followed a landmark case last year in which a doctor was acquitted of wrongdoing for euthanizing a woman in 2016 with severe Alzheimer’s who had requested the procedure before her condition deteriorated.’”
NINTH CIRCUIT COURT REVIVES CHURCH’S LAWSUIT AGAINST CALIFORNIA ABORTION INSURANCE MANDATE (Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Ninth Circuit,” Christian Post, May 15, 2020: “A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has revived a California church’s lawsuit against a state law mandating insurance coverage for abortion. Skyline Wesleyan Church of La Mesa sued the California Department of Managed Health Care over letters from 2014 stating that insurance companies could not limit abortion coverage. ... The [Ninth Circuit] panel vacated the earlier district court ruling in a unanimous decision released Wednesday, sending the case back to the lower court for further proceedings. Circuit Judge Michelle Friedland authored the panel’s opinion, concluding that ‘Skyline has suffered an injury in fact. Before the Letters were sent, Skyline had insurance that excluded abortion coverage in a way that was consistent with its religious beliefs,’ Friedland wrote. ‘After the Letters were sent, Skyline did not have that coverage, and it has presented evidence that its new coverage violated its religious beliefs. There is nothing hypothetical about the situation.’ The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative law firm that represented the church before the Ninth Circuit, celebrated the panel’s decision. ‘The agency has unconstitutionally targeted religious organizations, repeatedly collaborated with pro-abortion advocates, and failed to follow the appropriate administrative procedures to implement its abortion-coverage requirement,’ said ADF Senior Counsel Jeremiah Galus.”
LOOKING FOR CHRIST’S RETURN THE MARK OF A TRUE CHRISTIAN (Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - “I believe it is a mark, that every true believer should be continually at,--to live so as to be ready to meet Christ. ... It is vain to tell me that a man may be a very good man, and yet not be ready for the kingdom of Christ. I deny it altogether. I say that every justified and converted man is ready, and that if you are not ready you are not a justified man. I say that the standard I put before you is nothing more than the New Testament standard, and the Apostles would have doubted your religion, if you were not looking and longing for the coming of the Lord. ... Yet a little while and the last sermon shall be preached,--the last congregation shall break up. Yet a little while and carelessness and infidelity shall cease and pass away. The believers among us shall meet with Christ, and the unbelievers shall be in hell. The night is far spent, and the day is at hand” (J.C. Ryle, Coming Events and Present Duties, 1879). “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Hebrews 9:28).
JOB AND THE STARS (Friday Church News Notes, May 22, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from creationmoments.com, May 13, 2020: “One of the arguments against the acceptance of the creation account in Genesis is the notion that the Bible was written by ancient men who would not have had sufficient knowledge to understand scientific issues. For example, theistic evolutionist commentators have suggested that the author of Genesis--and they usually refuse to acknowledge that this was Moses--must have believed that the sky was a solid dome, and the sun, moon, and stars just objects of light embedded into this dome. I would obviously disagree with that artificial interpretation of the text, which such evolutionists believe must have been written later--perhaps at the time of the Exile to Babylon. The Book of Job comes from a similar time as the Book of Genesis--and I would suggest that this was at the time that Moses was alive. In Job 11:7-8, Job’s ‘friend’ Zophar states that the wisdom of God is as high as the heaven. Thus, the infinitude of God is compared to the vastness of the universe. This comment is not isolated. In Job 22:12, Eliphaz states: ‘Is not God in the height of heaven?’ and ‘Behold the height of the stars, how high they are!’ These comments are not major doctrinal statements. Instead, they show that the opinions of people as ancient as the book of Genesis did not believe the sky to be a literal solid dome. Instead, these verses suggest a scientific accuracy, unexplainable by evolutionary models of history. Ref: Henry Morris, 2000, The Remarkable Record of Job, p. 43.”
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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