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Way of Life Literature

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Way of Life Literature

Publisher of Bible Study Materials

Way of Life Bible College
Friday Church News Notes
Volume 21, Issue 48 - November 27, 2020
Graphical Edition
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.
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CO-FOUNDER OF BLACK LIVES MATTER CALLS FOR DEFUNDING POLICE, DECRIMINALIZING DRUGS, AND EMPTYING PRISONS (Friday Church News Notes, November 27, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “BLM Co-Founder Calls on Biden,” Townhall, Nov. 21, 2020: “Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors on Friday penned an OpEd in Teen Vogue calling for the next president to back the BREATHE Act, something she calls ‘modern-day civil rights legislation.’ Of course, the major backers behind the legislation are Squad members Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). ... Here’s what she said the legislation does: ‘It starts by divesting federal resources from vehicles of harm and punishment like policing and incarceration. That means slashing enormous police budgets. That means decriminalizing drug use and repealing other federal laws that have for too long been used to disproportionately criminalize Black women, children, and families. BREATHE will put us on the road to police and prison abolition, letting our loved ones out of federal prison and immigration detention facilities...’ According to the proposal, the BREATHE Act would: (1) Dramatically change policing by outlawing ‘tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper bullets, pepper spray, flash bangs, long range acoustic devices (LRADs), Stingrays, lasers,’ and any other ‘less than lethal’ forms of crowd control as well as drones, body cameras, tasers and facial recognition software. (2) Prohibit law enforcement agencies from having joint task forces (like drug enforcement, border enforcement and gang enforcement). (3) No law enforcement officers on public or private schools, colleges and universities, medical facilities, courthouses at every level, Social Security offices or Congressional district offices. (4) Reduce nationwide prison populations across the country by at least 50 percent in five years and ‘complete decarceration’ within 10 years.”

HILLSONG PASTOR FIRED FOR ADULTERY (Friday Church News Notes, November 27, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Prominent Hillsong Pastor Carl Lentz, who has been called the “Apostle of Cool,” was fired on November 4 for adultery. Hillsong is a megachurch in Sydney, Australia, that has branched out in recent decades to establish chapters in many parts of the world. Formerly aligned with the Assembly of God, it is now an independent denomination with branches in major cities of 28 countries. All are under the direction of the mother church, Hillsong in Sydney, and the oversight of Brian Houston and a board of elders. Hillsong is also one of the most influential publishers of Contemporary Worship Music. Carl Lentz and his wife, Laura, were the co-pastors of Hillsong New York City, a hyper-cool church that boasts several celebrities as members or attendees, including pop star Justin Bieber, who in 2014 was baptized by Carl Lentz in the bathtub of a pro-basketball player. The adultery is no great surprise in light of Lentz’s personal lifestyle and the history and character of Hillsong. In 2002, Frank Houston (Brian’s father), founder of Hillsong Sydney, was fired for sexually abusing a boy, and in 2015 a royal commission censured Brian for covering up his father’s immorality. In 2001, Hillsong Sydney’s co-pastor, Bobbie Houston, produced a series of sexually explicit teaching tapes entitled Kingdom Women Love Sex. In May 2016, Hillsong New York City hosted a Hillsong Women’s Conference that featured scantily-dressed “cheerleaders,” an Elvis impersonator, and a “naked cowboy” wearing only a cowboy hat, boots, and a guitar. The cowboy was Hillsong New York City’s youth pastor, Diego Simla. In 2014, in an interview with CNN, Laura Lentz spoke to the issue of homosexuality by saying, “It’s not our place to tell anyone how they should live, it’s--that’s their journey.” In 2017, Lentz and Bieber were photographed in New Zealand drinking heavily and partying in a tavern. Later that year, Lentz refused to condemn abortion as sin, saying, “God’s the judge. People have to live to their own convictions” (“Hillsong Pastor,” ChristianHeadlines.com, Nov. 7, 2017). In 2019, Yelp identified Hillsong Los Angeles as one of the top ten “gay friendly churches” in the city. “This says something about Hillsong. A homosexual can walk in, sit down, be entertained, and not have their conscience pricked by the preaching of the biblical gospel and a call to repent of sins and come to Christ” (“Hillsong Listed in Top Ten,” Reformationcharlotte, Sept. 3, 2019). In June 2020, Lentz proudly posted a video of his daughter screaming rage at police at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in New York City. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Timothy 4:3-4). (For more about Hillsong and their music see The Satanic Attack on Sacred Music, a free video series available at www.wayoflife.org.)

WHY WON’T TWITTER USE ITS BLUE PENCIL ON RED CHINA? (Friday Church News Notes, November 27, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Why Won’t Twitter,” Unherd.com, Nov. 20, 2020: “In the dim and distant days before word processing, editors used to wield a blue pencil to make changes to copy. Hence the universal symbol of censorship: to ‘blue pencil’ a piece of text means to delete, bowdlerise or otherwise interfere with it. How nice to see Twitter keeping up the old traditions. If they don’t like your tweet or consider it suspect then out comes the blue pencil in digital form. Except, instead of taking away from your text, they might add to it with a message of their own. Such labels begin with a little exclamation mark in a circle and then go on to say something like ‘Get the facts about COVID-19’ or ‘This claim about election fraud is disputed.’ ... And then there’s the grotesque inconsistency. Consider the following tweet from the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations: ‘China is a country with multiple religions ... The freedom of religious belief is well protected’ (Chinese Mission to UN, Nov. 19, 2020). ‘The freedom of belief is well protected.’ Yes, apart for the 1 million plus Muslim Uighurs in concentration camps, the ongoing oppression of Buddhism in Tibet, the ripping down of crosses from Christian Churches and the systematic persecution of any group that refuses to submit to state control. So, do we see Twitter adding any little blue messages to the barefaced lies of the Beijing regime? We do not. ... So there we have it: a woke corporation that speaks over President Trump, while simultaneously providing a mouthpiece for President Xi. I guess it helps having the two faces.”

NEW REPORT ON NORTH KOREA’S DRACONIAN PERSECUTION (Friday Church News Notes, November 27, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “North Korea jails, executes anyone who owns a Bible,” Christian Headlines, Oct. 30, 2020: “A new report by a human rights watchdog details horrific violations of religious freedom within North Korea, including citizens brutally tortured for converting to Christianity and individuals publicly executed for owning a Bible. The 98-page report by the London-based Korea Future Initiative was released this month and based on 117 interviews with survivors, witnesses and perpetrators of the abuses. All total, 273 victims of religious freedom violations were identified, including 215 involving Christians and 56 from followers of shamanism. The age of the victims ranged from 3 to 80-plus. ... Christianity is illegal in North Korea. Citizens are told to treat the supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, as a god. Among the religious freedom violations detailed in the report: A government official was shot and killed at an airfield, in front of a crowd, for possession of a Bible. Public executions ‘were designed to instill fear into crowds who had been summoned’ and forced to attend. A Christian was tied to a wooden stake at a public market and executed by a firing squad for possession of a Bible. ... Other individuals in the report were arrested for owning a Bible. Christians were tortured by having a liquid with red pepper powder poured down their nostrils. ... The report listed other forms of torture for Christians and adherents of other religions: ‘being forced to hang on steel bars while being beaten with an oseungogakja; being hung by their legs; having their body tightly bound with sticks; being forced to perform squat-jumps and to sit and stand hundreds or thousands of times each day … being forced to kneel with a wooden bar inserted between their knee hollows; strangulation; being forced to witness the execution or torture of other prisoners; starvation; being forced to ingest polluted food; being forced into solitary confinement; being deprived of sleep, and being forced to remain seated and still for up to and beyond 12-hours a day.’”

THE LAKE MISSOULA FLOOD (Friday Church News Notes, November 27, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from creationmoments.com, June 26, 2020: “At about the same time that biology was infected by Darwinian evolutionism, geology had been infected by the ideas of Charles Lyell. He rejected the idea of catastrophism, as described in the Bible. In fact, his motivation was to wean people off believing in what he described as Mosaic Geology--the geology of Moses. Lyell’s concept of geology was one of slow, gradual change--a concept known as uniformitarianism. In the 1920s, J. Harlen Bretz noticed that eastern Washington State had a lot of features which seemed to be waterfalls without any water flowing over them. The largest of these was the famous Dry Falls. The region also contained large canyons with flat bottoms and near vertical walls, called coulees. These, coupled with the many large gravel bars, suggested to Bretz that the area must have been scoured at one time by fast-flowing flood water. Bretz’s idea was ridiculed by the geological establishment for many years because a catastrophic flood sounded too much like the Genesis Flood. However, decades later, more evidence, including aerial views, eventually convinced geologists that Bretz was, in fact, correct and that a catastrophic event had shaped that region. Consequently, uniformitarian ideas were modified to allow for certain catastrophes. Deep-time geologists now think that there must have been several floods in the region, but the evidence only really suggests one, formed by the drainage of a glacial lake at Missoula, Montana, formed from retained floodwater, breaking free, as post-Flood Ice Age glaciers retreated. Ref: Oard, M.J. and Reed, J.K., How Noah’s Flood Shaped Our World (Powder Springs, GA: Creation Book Publishers), pp. 160-162.”

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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