Friday Church News Notes
Volume 21, Issue 47 - November 20, 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.
AMERICA’S BLESSINGS (Friday Church News Notes, November 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Conservative political commentator Michael Medved calls America “the greatest nation on God’s green earth,” and we agree. It is backsliding spiritually, degrading morally, its liberties are under attack, and there are many woes, as we point out regularly in this publication, but in the broad context of the world today America remains unique. We would mention just a few examples. There is more personal freedom than any other nation. America’s famed Bill of Rights has been weakened by activist courts, but there is still great liberty in comparison with other nations. There is more true justice than in the vast majority of nations. There are more NT churches and born again Christians. There are more economic opportunities. There is more equality, more opportunities for “minorities.” There is more freedom for gun ownership and thus self-defense. There are more private schools and home schools than any other country. There is a much larger conservative constituency than other countries. By conservative we mean such views as pro-life, pro traditional marriage, less government regulation, anti-globalism, anti-socialism, pro freedom of religion and freedom of speech, educational freedom, and effective immigration control. America has a very large and aggressive conservative media. About half of the nation voted for Donald Trump and his conservative agenda. Conservatives are represented politically by the Republican party, which controls the U.S. Senate and picked up at least nine seats in the House of Representatives, “putting them in close range to regain the House in 2022.” Republicans fully control the governments of 24 states (called a trifecta), compared with 15 states for Democrats, and control both chambers of the state legislatures in another 7 states, for a total of 31. (In 1975, Democrats held 37 trifectas, so Republicans have gained considerable power at the state level over the past 45 years.) In 2020, Republicans increased their control of the 99 state legislative bodies from 58 to 62. This is more than at any point in the nation’s history. The Republican Party is steadily increasing its support among blacks and Hispanics.
NORWAY OUTLAWS PRIVATE “HATE SPEECH” AGAINST HOMOSEXUALS (LGBT) (Friday Church News Notes, November 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Norway’s LGBTQ+ Hate Speech,” National Review, Nov. 11, 2020: “We’re forever hearing about this supposed rise in ‘LGBTQ+ hate crimes,’ and it’s no wonder, really --given that the definition of what constitutes a ‘hate crime’ keeps being expanded. The latest example is Norway, which has just amended its penal code, first passed in 1981, to outlaw even ‘private remarks’ that the ruling class considers offensive. Reuters reports: ‘People found guilty of hate speech face a fine or up to a year in jail for private remarks, and a maximum of three years in jail for public comments, according to the penal code.’ What makes this amendment particularly gratuitous is that Norway is, as Reuters puts it, ‘one of the most liberal countries in Europe for LGBT+ people.’ The country operates on a full system of self-identification, and no medical proof is required to change one’s legal gender. LGBTQ+ ideology has been mainstreamed in every sphere of life imaginable. Still, radical gender activists will not be at rest until every private citizen repudiates biological truth and relinquishes his every doubt about their dogma.”
HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY LABELS TWITTER A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY (Friday Church News Notes, November 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “DHS chief labels Twitter,” The Washington Times, Oct. 30, 2020: “Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf labeled Twitter a ‘threat’ to America’s security on Friday, saying that the tech giant’s quick trigger finger in censoring government agencies could deny people information they need to be safe. Mr. Wolf’s comments came after an embarrassing incident in which Twitter expunged a tweet about the border wall and locked the account of the head of Customs and Border Protection, saying it was ‘hateful’ to claim that ‘walls work’ to stop gang members and criminals from getting across. Twitter caved after nearly 24 hours, restoring the tweet and access to the account. ‘It is dangerous and damaging when any publisher arbitrarily and unfoundedly decides, as it did here, that the facts and policies of a particular presidential administration constitute violence--in order to censor them,’ Mr. Wolf wrote in a letter to Twitter’s CEO. He continued: ‘And in the case of Twitter, this can cut off an essential mode of communication between U.S. government officials and the public. In doing so, Twitter is sabotaging public discourse regarding important national and homeland security issues.’”
ANTONIO GRAMSCI AND THE MARXIZING OF THE INNER MAN IN THE WEST (Friday Church News Notes, November 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Antonio Gramsci was the founder of the Italian Communist Party in 1921. Following is an overview of Gramsci’s plan to Marxise the inner man and thereby create a new West: “What was essential, insisted Gramsci, was to Marxise the inner man. Only when that was done could you successfully dangle the utopia of the ‘Workers’ Paradise’ before his eyes, to be accepted in a peaceful and humanly agreeable manner, without revolution or violence or bloodshed. ... What Marx and Lenin had got wrong, Gramsci said, was the part about an immediate proletarian revolution. ... Gramsci had a better way. A subtler blueprint for Marxist victory. ... Use Lenin’s geopolitical structure not to conquer streets and cities, argued Gramsci. Use it to conquer the mind of civil society. Use it to acquire a Marxist hegemony over the minds of the populations that must be won. ... they must join in whatever liberating causes might come to the fore. ... Marxists must join with women, with the poor, with those who find certain civil laws oppressive. ... they must enter into every civil, cultural, and political activity in every nation, patiently leavening them as thoroughly as yeast leavens bread. If there was any true superstructure that had to be eliminated, it was the Christianity that had created and still pervaded Western Culture in all its forms, activities, and expressions. ... Marxist action must be unitary against what he saw to be the failing remnant of Christianity. And by a unitary attack, Gramsci meant that Marxists must change the residually Christian mind. He needed to alter that mind—to turn it into its opposite in all its details—so that it would become not merely a non-Christian mind but an anti-Christian mind. ... everything must be done in the name of man’s dignity and rights, and in the name of his autonomy and freedom from outside constraint. From the claims and constraints of Christianity, above all else. Accomplish that, said Gramsci, and you will have established a true and freely adopted hegemony over the ... thinking of every formerly Christian country. Do that, he promised, and in essence you will have Marxized the West. The final step—the Marxization of the politics of life itself—will then follow” (Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood, 1990, pp. 247-251). Martin was a Roman Catholic and did not understand fundamental spiritual issues, but he did understand cultural Marxism.
CHINA REMOVING CHRISTIANITY FROM CLASSICAL BOOKS (Friday Church News Notes, November 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “In China, Even ‘Robinson Crusoe’ Is Censored,” Bitter Winter, May 26, 2019: “To help achieve the goal of eradicating any teaching content with religious overtones, the CCP is now altering the books written by international authors that are read by primary and secondary school students. According to a parent of a student in north Hebei Province, the content of some books was deleted or changed in the new version of the grade six Chinese language textbook, published by the People’s Education Press in January 2019. The original version of English writer Daniel Defoe’s (1660-1731) novel Robinson Crusoe contains the following passage: ‘also, I found three very good Bibles, […] some Portuguese books also; and among them two or three Popish prayer-books, and several other books all which I carefully secured.’ In the new version of the textbook, the content related to the Bible and prayer books was deleted ... The short story Vanka by Russian writer Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) has also been altered beyond recognition. Religious terms in the original version--such as ‘attend Sunday service,’ ‘hope God will send you his blessings,’ ‘I will pray for you,’ and ‘I beg you for Christ’s sake’--have been deleted, and ‘for the dear Lord’s sake’ has also been altered to ‘for goodness’ sake.’ Hans Christian Andersen’s (1805-1875) The Little Match Girl has also been altered: the passage, ‘when a star falls, a soul was going up to God,’ has been changed into ‘when a star falls, a person is leaving.’”
MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD DNA (Friday Church News Notes, November 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from creationmoments.com, September 11, 2020: “While even many Christians feel obligated to accept millions of evolutionary years, evidence continues to build for a young creation. The evidence has mounted to the point that even many evolutionists feel they must find some explanation for it. In a previous Creation Moments program, we talked about DNA and other cell material found unfossilized in what was otherwise a fossilized T. rex. Since then, a hadrosaur leg bone with intact blood cells has also been found. Then there is the mummified hadrosaur that was the subject of a television special. Even its internal organs were intact. According to evolutionists, we are supposed to believe that this mummy had not crumbled to dust in 77 million years. That claim is not credible, given our experience with the best preserved Egyptian mummies that are only a few thousand years old. Segments of DNA have also been found from Neanderthals, supposedly prehistoric mammals, plants and even bacteria. According to evolutionary dating, these samples range in age from 40,000 to 250 million years. Yet, we know that DNA is totally decayed in 10,000 years. Enough color pigment cells remain in a fossilized feather that you can still see the color pattern. Yet, it is supposedly more than 100 million years old. While evolutionists have tried some explanations for this evidence, the simplest explanation is that they are young. Ref: Acts & Facts, 6/09, p. 17, Brian Thomas, ‘Fossilized Biomaterials Must Be Young.’”
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).
NORWAY OUTLAWS PRIVATE “HATE SPEECH” AGAINST HOMOSEXUALS (LGBT) (Friday Church News Notes, November 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Norway’s LGBTQ+ Hate Speech,” National Review, Nov. 11, 2020: “We’re forever hearing about this supposed rise in ‘LGBTQ+ hate crimes,’ and it’s no wonder, really --given that the definition of what constitutes a ‘hate crime’ keeps being expanded. The latest example is Norway, which has just amended its penal code, first passed in 1981, to outlaw even ‘private remarks’ that the ruling class considers offensive. Reuters reports: ‘People found guilty of hate speech face a fine or up to a year in jail for private remarks, and a maximum of three years in jail for public comments, according to the penal code.’ What makes this amendment particularly gratuitous is that Norway is, as Reuters puts it, ‘one of the most liberal countries in Europe for LGBT+ people.’ The country operates on a full system of self-identification, and no medical proof is required to change one’s legal gender. LGBTQ+ ideology has been mainstreamed in every sphere of life imaginable. Still, radical gender activists will not be at rest until every private citizen repudiates biological truth and relinquishes his every doubt about their dogma.”
HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY LABELS TWITTER A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY (Friday Church News Notes, November 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “DHS chief labels Twitter,” The Washington Times, Oct. 30, 2020: “Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf labeled Twitter a ‘threat’ to America’s security on Friday, saying that the tech giant’s quick trigger finger in censoring government agencies could deny people information they need to be safe. Mr. Wolf’s comments came after an embarrassing incident in which Twitter expunged a tweet about the border wall and locked the account of the head of Customs and Border Protection, saying it was ‘hateful’ to claim that ‘walls work’ to stop gang members and criminals from getting across. Twitter caved after nearly 24 hours, restoring the tweet and access to the account. ‘It is dangerous and damaging when any publisher arbitrarily and unfoundedly decides, as it did here, that the facts and policies of a particular presidential administration constitute violence--in order to censor them,’ Mr. Wolf wrote in a letter to Twitter’s CEO. He continued: ‘And in the case of Twitter, this can cut off an essential mode of communication between U.S. government officials and the public. In doing so, Twitter is sabotaging public discourse regarding important national and homeland security issues.’”
ANTONIO GRAMSCI AND THE MARXIZING OF THE INNER MAN IN THE WEST (Friday Church News Notes, November 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Antonio Gramsci was the founder of the Italian Communist Party in 1921. Following is an overview of Gramsci’s plan to Marxise the inner man and thereby create a new West: “What was essential, insisted Gramsci, was to Marxise the inner man. Only when that was done could you successfully dangle the utopia of the ‘Workers’ Paradise’ before his eyes, to be accepted in a peaceful and humanly agreeable manner, without revolution or violence or bloodshed. ... What Marx and Lenin had got wrong, Gramsci said, was the part about an immediate proletarian revolution. ... Gramsci had a better way. A subtler blueprint for Marxist victory. ... Use Lenin’s geopolitical structure not to conquer streets and cities, argued Gramsci. Use it to conquer the mind of civil society. Use it to acquire a Marxist hegemony over the minds of the populations that must be won. ... they must join in whatever liberating causes might come to the fore. ... Marxists must join with women, with the poor, with those who find certain civil laws oppressive. ... they must enter into every civil, cultural, and political activity in every nation, patiently leavening them as thoroughly as yeast leavens bread. If there was any true superstructure that had to be eliminated, it was the Christianity that had created and still pervaded Western Culture in all its forms, activities, and expressions. ... Marxist action must be unitary against what he saw to be the failing remnant of Christianity. And by a unitary attack, Gramsci meant that Marxists must change the residually Christian mind. He needed to alter that mind—to turn it into its opposite in all its details—so that it would become not merely a non-Christian mind but an anti-Christian mind. ... everything must be done in the name of man’s dignity and rights, and in the name of his autonomy and freedom from outside constraint. From the claims and constraints of Christianity, above all else. Accomplish that, said Gramsci, and you will have established a true and freely adopted hegemony over the ... thinking of every formerly Christian country. Do that, he promised, and in essence you will have Marxized the West. The final step—the Marxization of the politics of life itself—will then follow” (Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood, 1990, pp. 247-251). Martin was a Roman Catholic and did not understand fundamental spiritual issues, but he did understand cultural Marxism.
CHINA REMOVING CHRISTIANITY FROM CLASSICAL BOOKS (Friday Church News Notes, November 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “In China, Even ‘Robinson Crusoe’ Is Censored,” Bitter Winter, May 26, 2019: “To help achieve the goal of eradicating any teaching content with religious overtones, the CCP is now altering the books written by international authors that are read by primary and secondary school students. According to a parent of a student in north Hebei Province, the content of some books was deleted or changed in the new version of the grade six Chinese language textbook, published by the People’s Education Press in January 2019. The original version of English writer Daniel Defoe’s (1660-1731) novel Robinson Crusoe contains the following passage: ‘also, I found three very good Bibles, […] some Portuguese books also; and among them two or three Popish prayer-books, and several other books all which I carefully secured.’ In the new version of the textbook, the content related to the Bible and prayer books was deleted ... The short story Vanka by Russian writer Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) has also been altered beyond recognition. Religious terms in the original version--such as ‘attend Sunday service,’ ‘hope God will send you his blessings,’ ‘I will pray for you,’ and ‘I beg you for Christ’s sake’--have been deleted, and ‘for the dear Lord’s sake’ has also been altered to ‘for goodness’ sake.’ Hans Christian Andersen’s (1805-1875) The Little Match Girl has also been altered: the passage, ‘when a star falls, a soul was going up to God,’ has been changed into ‘when a star falls, a person is leaving.’”
MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD DNA (Friday Church News Notes, November 20, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from creationmoments.com, September 11, 2020: “While even many Christians feel obligated to accept millions of evolutionary years, evidence continues to build for a young creation. The evidence has mounted to the point that even many evolutionists feel they must find some explanation for it. In a previous Creation Moments program, we talked about DNA and other cell material found unfossilized in what was otherwise a fossilized T. rex. Since then, a hadrosaur leg bone with intact blood cells has also been found. Then there is the mummified hadrosaur that was the subject of a television special. Even its internal organs were intact. According to evolutionists, we are supposed to believe that this mummy had not crumbled to dust in 77 million years. That claim is not credible, given our experience with the best preserved Egyptian mummies that are only a few thousand years old. Segments of DNA have also been found from Neanderthals, supposedly prehistoric mammals, plants and even bacteria. According to evolutionary dating, these samples range in age from 40,000 to 250 million years. Yet, we know that DNA is totally decayed in 10,000 years. Enough color pigment cells remain in a fossilized feather that you can still see the color pattern. Yet, it is supposedly more than 100 million years old. While evolutionists have tried some explanations for this evidence, the simplest explanation is that they are young. Ref: Acts & Facts, 6/09, p. 17, Brian Thomas, ‘Fossilized Biomaterials Must Be Young.’”
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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