ALBUM BY HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVIST IS TOP CHRISTIAN EP ON ITUNES (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2021, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The album “Preacher’s Kid” by Grace Baldridge (aka Semler), an “openly queer Christian artist,” was No. 1 on Apple’s iTunes’ Christian chart recently and currently is No. 6. The album features “explicit lyrics” and taunts about anti-homosexual “judgmentalism.” The opening track, “Bethlehem,” says, “I’m a child of God, just in case you forgot, and you cast me out every single chance that you got, and that’s your loss, not mine. I’ll be better than fine.” Baldridge said the album is “a project about coming out as a queer person of faith ... I want to grab the No. 1 spot on the iTunes Christian music chart and claim it for anyone who has been cast out in the name of God” (“LGBTQ singer-songwriter,” Religion News Service, Feb. 10, 2021). In an interview with RNS, she said, “My dad is an Episcopal priest. ... I would describe myself as a faithfully skeptical Christian. I definitely struggle with a lot of doubt. I’m the person that stands up at Communion, going down the aisle, and in my head I’ll be like, ‘This is a cult, right? This is a little weird.’ ... Whether or not you’ve been burned by purity culture or toxic masculinity that’s been enforced and by rigid church teachings, or whether you’re a member of the LGBTQ-plus community and told you are not valuable and you do not deserve the same dignity as other people, we are speaking up for ourselves. I think in some ways, through this project, we’re able to do so by holding up a little bit of a mirror to Christian media, like, we’re here. You can’t ignore us anymore. We’re No. 1 right now.”
MORE BIG TECH CENSORSHIP OF CONSERVATIVE SPEECH (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2021, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Big Tech censorship of conservative speech continues. In January, YouTube, a Google subsidiary, banned The Epoch Times from earning money off its videos. Stephen Gregory, publisher of The Epoch Times, said, “This is the latest example of big tech suppression of free speech, a step on the road to communist-style censorship” (FreeRepublic.com, Jan. 26, 2021). “Larry Elder, a prominent, African-American conservative filmmaker who hosts a video series for The Epoch Times, confirmed during an interview with the ‘Just the News AM’ television program that the de-monetization hit him personally, reducing his income. ... Elder said, ‘The only answer is not to ... moan and whine about how unfairly we’re being treated, not to run to the government to pass more regulations. The answer is to build our own platforms. And we have been asleep at the switch’” (Just the News). On Jan. 12, conservative commentator and Trump supporter Curt Schilling’s insurance was canceled by AIG due to his “Social Media profile” (@gehrig38, Jan. 13, 2021). Schilling, a retired major league baseball star pitcher, has been very vocal about election fraud. On Jan. 25, Twitter locked LifeSiteNews from two of its accounts for stating that President Joe Biden’s Assistant Secretary of Health “Rachel” Levine is a man. The accounts displayed a simple message which read, “Biden names transgender ‘woman’ as Assistant Secretary of Health. ‘Rachel’ Levine is a father of two who divorced his wife in 2013 after 30 years of marriage.” On Feb. 10, Google-owned YouTube completely removed LifeSiteNews and deleted all of its videos. LifeSiteNews is an anti-abortion Catholic organization that had 300,000 followers on YouTube. On Feb. 11, Twitter permanently banned Project Veritas, a much hated and often maligned organization dedicated to expose misconduct and corruption in the media and liberal organizations, such as Facebook and Google (“Twitter bans,” CNN Business, Feb. 12, 2021). On Feb. 11, Facebook-owned Instagram banned Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., nephew of former president John F. Kennedy, for “sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.” Kennedy, founder of Children’s Health Defense, is a critic of vaccines he believes to be harmful (“Kennedy Banned,” Summit News, Feb. 11, 2021). He had 800,000 subscribers when he was de-platformed. Instagram’s censors, of course, are the world’s premier experts in medicine and have infallible knowledge of this field.
PARLER BACK AFTER SECURING NEW COMPUTER SERVERS (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2021, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Welcome back,” Just the News, Feb. 16, 2021: “Parler, the upstart social media platform silenced last month by big-tech censorship, said Monday it is resuming operations under new leadership and with new computer servers. Parler moved to a new computer server farm after Amazon Web Services shut off the social media platform on Jan. 11. Parler’s 20 million users can begin using their old app and logins Monday, interim CEO Mark Meckler told Just the News. ... Meckler also said the platform is using artificial intelligence and human editors to police for illegal speech that violates its service agreement but otherwise is remaining true to its free speech, no censorship roots. Dan Bongino, a prominent Parler user and shareholder, was one of the first to get back online, posting stories Monday morning about businesses fleeing New York and Amazon workers moving toward unionization in Alabama.”
FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT WARNS THAT POLITICAL POWER IS “A NEVER-DYING WORM IN THE BOSOM” (Friday Church News Notes, February 19, 2021, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - America’s ninth president, William Henry Harrison, delivered a two-hour inaugural speech in January 1841 that contained great wisdom. He said, “Republics can commit no greater error than to ... continue any feature in their ... government which may ... increase the love of power in the bosoms of those to whom necessity obliges them to commit the management of their affairs ... When this corrupting passion once takes possession of the human mind, like the love of gold it becomes insatiable. It is the never-dying worm in his bosom, grows with his growth and strengthens with the declining years of its victim. ... The danger to all well-established free governments arises from the unwillingness of the people to believe in ... the influence of designing men ... Caesar became the master of the Roman people and the senate under the pretense of supporting the democratic claims of the former against the aristocracy of the latter ... Limited as are the powers which have been granted [to the American government], still enough have been granted to constitute a despotism if concentrated in one of the departments.”
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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